terco

Attested from the fifteenth century, several farther etymologies have been suggested^[1]:

• a shared proto-Romance word of Celtic origin, from Proto-Celtic *terkos (“scarce, meagre”), from Proto-Indo-European *ters- (“dry”), compare Irish tearc (“meagre”);^[2]
• a derivation from Italian pirchio (“stingy”, dialectal) +‎ tirato (“avaricious”);^[3]
• 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”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈteɾko/ [ˈt̪eɾ.ko]
• Rhymes: -eɾko
• Syllabification: ter‧co

terco (feminine terca, masculine plural tercos, feminine plural tercas)

1. stubborn, stiff-necked, obstinate, willful, dogged, pigheaded, hardheaded, bullheaded

   Synonyms: obstinado, porfiado, testarudo

• “terco”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 10 December 2024