lace [ME] This comes from Latin laqueus ‘noose’ which was also found as an early sense in English and is still the basic sense of the Spanish-American equivalent, lasso [M18th]. Lace, as in shoelace [M17th], is Late Middle English. The fine openwork fabric of looping threads was known as lace from the middle of the 16th century. The verb lace, to mean ‘fortify’ and ‘flavour’ as in to lace a drink, is from the late 17th century. Lacerate [LME] is unrelated, coming from Latin lacerare ‘to mangle, tear’.