cuitlacochtototl.

Headword: 
cuitlacochtototl.
Principal English Translation: 

Curve-billed Thrasher, a bird (see Hunn, attestations)

Orthographic Variants: 
cuitlacochin
Attestations from sources in English: 

CUITLACOCH-IN/CUITLACOCH-TŌTŌ-TL, Curve-billed Thrasher (Toxostoma curvirostre) [FC: 51-52 Cujtlacochin/Cuitlacochtototl] “It has long legs, stick-like legs, very black; it has a pointed, slender, curved bill. It is ashen, ash-colored, dark ashen. It has a song, a varied song. It is named cuitlacochtototl, which is taken from its song, because it says cuitlacoch, cuitlacoch, tarata, tarat, tatatati, tatatati, titiriti, tiriti. It is capable of domestication; it is teachable. It breeds everywhere, in treetops, in openings in walls. Wherever it is inaccessible, there it breeds. Its food is insects, flies, water flies, flesh, ground maize.” This is the Curve-billed Thrasher. It is well known today throughout Mexico. The name is coincidentally nearly the same as that for the fungus (“huitlacoche.” Ustilago maydis) that infects maize ears and which is considered a culinary delicacy. However, the bird’s name is derived from CUĪC “to sing,” rather than from CUITLA-TL “excrescence” (“corn smut” on Wikipedia).
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 11 – Earthly Things, no. 14, Part XII, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1963); and, with quotation selections, synthesis, and analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.

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