march [LME] There are three English words march, if you include March. The march with the sense ‘to walk in a military manner’ came from French marcher ‘to walk’ in the late Middle Ages. If you march to a different tune you consciously adopt a different approach or attitude to the majority of people. The variant march to a different drummer was inspired by an observation from the 19th-century US essayist and poet Henry David Thoreau: ‘If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.’

Another march means ‘the border or frontier of a country’, now found mainly in the geographical term the Marches, used for the area of land on the border of England and Wales, such as the counties of Shropshire and Monmouthshire. It too came from French, but is probably related to mark [OE], from the idea of a boundary marker, as well as being the origin of marquis [ME], originally a Marcher lord.

The month is named after Mars, the Roman god of war, and was originally the first month of the Roman calendar. Weather lore from the early 17th century tells us that March comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb—traditionally the weather is wild at the beginning of March, but fair and settled by the end. The name of the god Mars is also the source of martial [LME], ‘relating to fighting or war’, which entered English in the late Middle Ages. The martial arts, sports such as judo, karate, and kendo, originated in Japan, China, and Korea and first came to European attention in the late 19th century, though the general term martial arts is not recorded until 1920. See also mad.