Etymology: < Middle French pocher to cook (an egg) without the shell in simmering, or over boiling, water (1393; earlier in Old French as past participial adjective pochié : see poached adj.¹) < poche (see poke n.¹). Compare slightly earlier poaché n.French pocher , in sense 1a, is usually explained as referring to the enclosure of the yolk in the white as in a bag. For further senses of the French word compare poach v.² In sense 2 apparently an independent reborrowing < French pocher; compare the specific senses in French ‘to depict someone in a drawing’ (1587), ‘to do something quickly in the manner of a sketch’ (1768). In early use apparently frequently with short -o-, as in French.

Etymology: Origin uncertain. It is also uncertain whether the material below shows the development of a single word or of two or more, and whether (if a single origin is assumed) the original meaning should be taken to be ‘to shove’, ‘to poke’, ‘to thrust’, ‘to trample’, or ‘to thrust into a bag’. Branch I. perhaps shows a variant (with palatalized consonant) of poke v.¹, but if so sense 1b must be of independent origin, < Middle French, French pocher to poke out (an eye) (1223 in Old French; specific use of pocher poach v.¹, perhaps arising originally from an analogy between the empty eye socket and a bag or pocket); with the early uses at sense 1a, and perhaps also with branch III., perhaps compare also French pocher poach v.¹ in the sense ‘to put in a bag’, although this sense (although apparently a primary one) is not recorded in French until later (1660, unless implied slightly earlier by the idiom recorded by Cotgrave in quot. 1611 at sense 8a) and is apparently rare at all times. Perhaps alternatively compare poke v.², of which the present word could perhaps show a variant (perhaps compare early forms at pouch n.).The word apparently had a variant with short o in early use, which is still widespread in regional varieties. Compare likewise poach v.¹