Word.ws English Dictionary

patolli

patolli noun: a board game, similar to pachisi, played by the Aztecs.

Noun

patolli (uncountable)

  1. A board game, similar to pachisi, played by the Aztecs.
    • There is also the resemblance between the Hindu game of pachesi and the Mexica patolli, so close as to be virtually identical.1992, Olive Patricia Dickason, Canada′s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times, page 61
    • Mesoamericans played a game called patolli, which has been likened to parcheesi.[…]Post-Conquest accounts also indicate patolli had religious meaning, and calendrical, numerological, cosmological, and astronomical symbolism determined the rules of play.1994, Edwin C. Krupp, Echoes of the Ancient Skies: The Astronomy of Lost Civilizations, published 2003, page 294

Origin of patolli

Borrowed from Classical Nahuatl patōlli.

Questions about patolli

What does patolli mean?
Patolli means a board game, similar to pachisi, played by the Aztecs.
What part of speech is patolli?
Patolli is a noun.

Words near patolli in the dictionary

  1. patois
  2. Patoka
  3. patola
  4. patolas
  5. patole
  6. patolli
  7. Paton
  8. patonce
  9. patonces
  10. patoncy
  11. patoncé

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: patolli (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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