mâchen.¹

Etymology: < French †mache (1611 in Cotgrave, now mâche), probably shortened < pomache (perhaps 16th cent.; probably < a vulgar Latin derivative of pomum fruit), probably by analogy with mâcher to chew. English forms in -sche are either by analogy with French mâcher, †mascher (spelt thus in Cotgrave) or after unattested French forms with analogical -s- of similar origin, as reflected in the circumflex accent of the current French form mâche (attested from mid 18th cent.).Borrowed in the late 17th cent., and used, usually or always in plural, as a naturalized word; the word appears to have become rare or obsolete by the mid 18th cent., after which a secondary borrowing, in which the word was not always regarded as fully naturalized, took place in the 19th and 20th centuries. N.E.D. (1904) enters the 17th- and 18th-cent. evidence under the headword Maches, presumably taking this (and similarly masches, maschets, maskets) as the singular form.