Etymology: Middle English trufle, etc., < Old French trufle (13th cent. in Godefroy), treufle, truffle (1370), parallel forms of trufe, truffe, ‘moquerie, tromperie’ (1265 in Godefroy), = Italian truffa, ‘a cozening, cheating, conicatching’ (Florio), Provençal trufa, obsolete Spanish trufa, Portuguese trufa, ‘a gibe, a iesting or ieering’ (Minsheu); of uncertain origin. The phonology of the word in English presents difficulties; but trufle, with ü, would give later tryfle, triffle; and u sometimes varied dialectally with o, as in the Middle English trofel. The short ĭ indicated by ff in tryffel, triffol, triffle, appears from the 14th to the 18th cent.; but trifle with single f is ambiguous, and does not show when trĭfle became trīfle. For the ulterior etymology, Diez was inclined to identify French truffe , trufle with truffe , Provençal trufa (Littré), a truffle n. a subterranean edible fungus. But it is apparently only in French (and Provençal) that the two words have the same form, and no connection of sense has been ascertained: see truffle n.

Etymology: Middle English < Old French truffle-r , truiffle-r , parallel form of truffer , trufer , trupher (13th cent. in Godefroy) to make sport of, deceive, jeer or laugh at, = Italian truffare ‘to cozen, to cheate, to coniecatch’ (Florio): compare truffe , trufle , truffle mockery, cheating: see trifle n.

Etymology: Eng. Dial. Dict. suggests derivation from Old English trifulian, tribulian, getrifulian, < Latin trībulāre to thresh, bruise, pound, grind, < trībulum threshing-sledge; this seems probable, though no examples are known between the 11th and 17th centuries, and the sense is not exactly identical.Previous versions of the OED give the stress as: ˈtrifle.