liser

Definite, Anglo-French/Old French liser, lisier(e), etc. (Mod. French lisière). OED states that the etymology of the French word is obscure. Some French etymological sources are uncertain, but suggest a possible derivation from Old Saxon *lisa 'rut, strip' (though a more likely form is *lêsa), or its Frankish cognate, cf. Old High German leisa (> Mod. G. geleise, gleis 'rail' etc., and outside Germanic, Old Prussian lyso 'ploughing strip' etc. in Baltic. Cf. the word list (q.v.), which had close meanings and is from a germanic root. This is contra the older theory in the Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch which derives this word from lisse < Latin Latin licium (q.v.) 'thread, length of yarn', rejected on the basis that lis is not attested before liser (first appearing in the late 14th cent.). Liser first appears in French in the mid-thirteenth century and was borrowed into Middle English by the fifteenth, where it could be used more generally to mean 'a strip of something' (not just fabric). The Latin derivatives are from French. Lisière was reborrowed from French in the eighteenth century with the sense 'edge of land, fortification, berm'.