chalchihuitl

Borrowed from Classical Nahuatl chalchihuitl.

chalchihuitl (countable and uncountable, plural chalchihuitls)

1. (mineralogy, South America) turquoise
   • 1974, Theodore R. Frisbie, quoting John G. Bourke, “Hishi as Money in the Puebloan Southwest”, in The Snake-dance of the Moquis of Arizona, 1884, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, page 254, in reference to the Hopi, quoted in Collected Papers in Honor of Florence Hawley Ellis, Norman: Hooper Publishing Company, published 1975, page 125:

     But such a determinate value is attached to buckskin, eagle and wild turkey feathers, pelts of the Rocky Mountain lion, chalchihuitl, abalone, olivette shells (unpierced), the perforated sea-shell beads, silver necklaces, and other ornaments […]

• “chalchihuitl”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• chalchiuhtli

Sharing a root with xihuitl (“turquoise”). Shared a logogram in Aztec writing with "water".

• IPA^(key): /tʃaːltʃiwitɬ/
• IPA^(key): [tʃaːɬ.ˈtʃí.witɬ]

Andrews (2003) and Karttunen (1983) write chālchihuitl; Lockhart (2001) writes chālchihuitl, but says "Some suspicion remains that the first i is long."

chālchihuitl

1. A precious green stone: greenstone, jade, turquoise.
   • 1524, Bernardino de Sahagún, Coloquios y doctrina cristiana

     ... auh no yehuan quitemaca ... in chalchihuitl, in quetzalli, in teocuitlatl.
     ... and they also give ... jade, plumes, gold.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

• Andrews, J. Richard. (2003) Workbook for Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, Revised Edition, University of Oklahoma Press, p. 215.
• Karttunen, Frances. (1983) An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl, University of Texas Press, p. 45.
• Lockhart, James. (2001) Nahuatl as Written, Stanford University Press, p. 214.