Coyote is Nahuatl coyotl, taken into American English in 1759 through Mexican Spanish. The reshaping of the ending is the thing to notice: Nahuatl was full of a tl sound that neither Spanish nor English could manage, so words carrying it came out with -te instead. Chocolate, tomato and coyote all show the same repair, which makes that ending a quiet marker of Aztec origin.
The word is one of a small group of Nahuatl borrowings that entered English through Spanish contact in the American southwest and Mexico, and like most of them it names something the English language had never needed a word for. The animal was noted from the start for its howling at night, which is presumably why the name travelled rather than being replaced by some English coinage like prairie-wolf, the term it competed with.
coyote (n.) common prairie-wolf of western North America, 1759, American English, from Mexican Spanish coyote , from Nahuatl (Aztecan) coyotl . Noted for its howling at night. also from 1759
coyote came in through Later and wider borrowings, and its spelling follows that family's conventions.
What gives it away on the page
| -tl reshaped into -te | Nahuatl, through Spanish.chocolate, tomato, avocado, coyote, chili |
Later and wider borrowings in the spelling guide · guess another word's family