yancuic (Mdz43r)
This element for yancuic from the compound glyph for the place name Yancuictlan seems to show a piece of fine, new cloth that attempts to convey the concept of new. The white rectangle is a simple black-line drawing with a simple border.
Stephanie Wood
It can be a challenge to present the concept "new" without drawing attention to a noun. Here, the tlacuilo seems to be showing something along the lines of what Westerners might call a "clean slate."
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
new, nuevo, el espacio en blanco, un borrón y cuenta nueva
yancuic, new, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/yancuic
nuevo
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 43 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 96 of 188.
The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, hold the original manuscript, the MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1. This image is published here under the UK Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0).