𐱃𐰺𐰃-

tarı- is a transitive agricultural verb whose core meaning is “to cultivate or till land”. Clauson distinguishes it from äk- “to sow” and tik- “to plant”, but its actual usage is broader: Old Uyghur texts also use it for sowing and planting and for cultivation in general, for example tarığ tarı- “to cultivate or sow a field” and käbäz tarı- “to cultivate cotton”. It also occurs together with äk-, saç- and tik-, and in religious texts can be used metaphorically of sowing good roots, seeds or deeds.

The simple verb has not been identified in the runiform inscriptions, although early derivatives such as tarığlağ and tarlağ show that the agricultural word family was already old. tarı- is frequent in Old Uyghur texts and continues in Karakhanid and later Middle Turkic. In many western and central varieties its agricultural function was subsequently taken over by äk-.

The comparative Turkic evidence securely supports an inherited agricultural stem *tarı-. Its deeper etymology is disputed: Erdal separates it from tar- “to scatter, disperse”, whereas Doerfer and Hamilton connect the two.