terco

See also: terço

Spanish

Etymology

Attested from the fifteenth century, probably cognate with Italian tirchio and Catalan enterch (“stiff, rigid”). Several farther etymologies have been suggested: a shared proto-Romance word from Proto-Celtic *terkos (“scarce, meagre”), compare Irish tearc (“meagre”) and Welsh taerc); a derivation from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Italian pirchio (“stingy”, dialectal) +‎ tirato (“avaricious”); or, reversing the usual derivation, from (rare) entercar (whence entercarse), syncopated from (rare, 16th. c) *enternegar, from Latin internecō (“I slaughter”); or from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Latin tricae (“trivia”), via a verb derived in (deprecated template usage) [etyl] . 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 internecō is phonetically the easiest.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈteɾko/ [ˈt̪eɾ.ko]

Adjective

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

1. stubborn, obstinate

   Synonyms: obstinado, porfiado, testarudo

Derived terms

• entercarse

Further reading

• Template:R:DRAE 2001