Also FOUCH. [ad. F. fourche FORK sb.]
† 1. = FOUCH 2. Obs.
1491. in Ld. Treas. Acc. Scotl. (1877), I. 181. Item … till a man of the Chanslaris that brocht a furche of venyson to the King v s.
1653. Urquhart, Rabelais, III. xi. My heart like the furch of a hart in rut doth beat within my breast.
2. Vet. Surg. = FRUSH, FROG. Also attrib. in furch-stay.
[App. introduced by B. Clark, as a more etymologically correct substitute for the current forms. The Fr. equivalent is fourchette.]
1842. Bracy Clark, On Running Frush (ed. 3), 2. The part diseased, and which in my Treatise on the Foot of the Horse published in 1809, I called the Furch-stay, as being the part which held the base of the Furch together. Ibid., 3. This remarkable part was without any name and very little noticed, till I gave it the epithet Frog-stay or Furch-stay.
