mèche

Inherited from Old French mesche, via Late Latin *micca or Vulgar Latin *mysca, alteration of Latin myxa (“sebesten tree”).

• IPA^(key): /mɛʃ/

• Audio (une mèche)

  (file)

mèche f (plural mèches)

1. wick (of candle)
2. fuse (of a bomb)
3. lock, tuft (of hair); streak (of colour, etc., in hair)
   • 1829, Victor Hugo, Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné, section XLVIII:

     Mes cheveux, coupés au hasard, tombaient par mèches sur mes épaules, et l’homme en chapeua à trois cornes les époussetait doucement avec sa grosse main.

     My hair, cut at random, fell in clumps on to my shoulders, and the man in the tricorn hat brushed them away softly with his fat hand.

4. (medicine) packing
5. drill bit
6. (music, lutherie, bowmaking) hair
7. cracker, popper, snapper (string tied to the end of a whip)
8. (nautical) rudderpost, (rudder) post

• être de mèche
• vendre la mèche

• → Italian: mèche
• → Portuguese: mecha
• → Sicilian: mecciu
• → Turkish: meç

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

mèche f (plural mèches)

1. (Louisiana, Cajun) marsh

• “mèche”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Unadapted borrowing from French mèche.

• IPA^(key): /ˈmɛʃ/^*
• Rhymes: -ɛʃ

mèche f (invariable)

1. streak (in the hair)

• mèche in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana