Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Froward; perverse; harsh; sour; crabbed.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective obsolete Forward; perverse; harsh; sour; rugged.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective obsolete Morose, bitter.
  • adjective chemistry Denoting a kind of acid.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin taetricus, tētricus, from taeter ("foul").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From tetra- +‎ -ic.

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Examples

  • Philosophos et severos, severe, sad, dry, tetric, are common epithets to scholars: and [1975] Patritius therefore, in the institution of princes, would not have them to be great students.

    Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

  • Her youthful days are over, and her face hath become wrinkled and tetric.

    Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 6 Lucia Isabella Gilbert Runkle 1864

  • A lover of his native tongue will tremble to think what that tongue would have become, if all the vocables from the Latin and the Greek which were then introduced or endorsed by illustrious names, had been admitted on the strength of their recommendation; if ‘torve’ and ‘tetric’ (Fuller),

    English Past and Present Richard Chenevix Trench 1846

  • They are commonly sad and tetric by nature, as Achab's spirit was because he could not get Naboth's vineyard, (1.

    Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

  • The truth is that it's quite tetric, it looks like a spirit emerging from the fog (the

    TravelPod.com Recent Updates 2008

  • The truth is that it's quite tetric, it looks like a spirit emerging from the fog (the

    TravelPod.com Recent Updates 2008

Comments

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  • See also tetrix.

    August 27, 2008

  • The fare at the fair is eclectic:

    You might spy a clown with a pet trick,

    See shows of all styles

    For thrills and for smiles

    And nary a visage that's tetric.

    May 15, 2017

  • I see that some GNU collaborator (or perhaps an imperious spell checker), in plundering The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia for a definition of "tetric " has assumed the old and honorable "froward" to be a misspelling of "forward" and has "corrected" it.

    Obscurity makes one a coward

    Another finds language empowered:

    It's timid and horrid

    To substitute forward

    From distrust of stubborn old froward.

    May 15, 2017