·     Not often found on monuments, mostly on ceramic vessels, as a qualifier for the type of cacao, in this case “fresh cacao”.

·     Pronunciation / reading:

o Epigraphers give either tzih or tzihil. This seems to be because it’s sometimes written tzi-hi and sometimes tzi-hi-li (or tzi-hi-la). In the case of  tzi-hi this could be the well-known problem of whether the last syllabogram written has a silent vowel (used only for the final consonant of the word) – tzi-hi è tzih or has an underspelled consonant after it (usually a “weak” consonant, like a continuant, fricative, or nasal) –  tzi-hi{l} è tzihil. The reason for suspecting the latter is indeed the existence of  tzi-hi-li and tzi-hi-la spellings.

o EB.p91-92.pdfp96-97 gives a few tzi-hi-li and a few tzi-hi-la, but sees an underspelled -l in all other instances with only tzi-hi; i.e. Boot thinks the word is simply always tzihil, even when written as just tzi-hi. K9099 might be an argument to consider tzihiil (a long-i) as an alternative reading for the second syllable of the word. Boot gives  tzihil even for K9099 with tzi-hi-la, but this is to be expected, as Boot never writes long vowels.

o In the case of K8728 and the Vase of El Señor del Peten (“objabbr = COLK8728” and “objabbr = SDPSDPV”) and many other cases, MHD has only tzi:hi ètzih = “fresh”, not tzihil. MHD gives  tzihil only when there is a li or la after tzi-hi. I.e. MHD reads two different forms for “fresh” – without and with an -il ending.

o Both approaches (of Boot and MHD) seem equally valid (from the point of view of logic). For the sake of simplicity I read tzihil for all the spellings, irrespective of whether or not an -l is written (i.e., in the absence of an explicit -l, I assume it to be present and consider the -l underspelled).