terco

Attested from the fifteenth century, several farther etymologies have been suggested: * a shared proto-Romance word of Celtic origin, from Proto-Celtic *terkos (“scarce, meagre”), from Proto-Indo-European *ters- (“dry”), compare Irish tearc (“meagre”); * a derivation from Italian pirchio (“stingy”, dialectal) + tirato (“avaricious”); * or, reversing the usual derivation, from rare entercar (whence entercarse), syncopated from rare 16th. century *enternegar, from Latin internecō (“to slaughter”); or from Latin tricae (“trivia”), via a verb derived in Vulgar Latin. As the word has no mediaeval attestation, a southern European borrowing from dialectal Italian may be most likely; of the proto-Romance theories, derivation from Latin internecō is phonetically the easiest. Probably cognate with Italian tirchio and Catalan enterc (“stiff, rigid”).

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