brusque

borrowed from French, borrowed from Italian brusco "(of a person's manner) rough, rude, abrupt," also "(of wine, food) sharp, pungent," going back to a pre-Latin expressive base *brūsk-, denoting prickliness, roughness

Note: The many outcomes of the base *brūsk- in Italian are detailed in Lessico etimologico italiano, vol. 7, columns 972-1030. A notable early form is brusco, denoting a plant, butcher's-broom (Ruscus aculeatus), documented in northern Italy and Tuscany from the fourteenth century, and attested as Latin bruscus from the ninth century, in a collection of antidotes (the Antidotarium Sangallense —see Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch). Perhaps even earlier, if it reflects the same base, is classical Latin bruscum, a word used in Pliny's Naturalis Historia for a knot or excrescence in a maple tree.