Etymology: < French débauche, < débaucher to debauch v. For the phonology, etc., see the verb.

Etymology: perhaps < French débauché, with -e mute, or ? corruption of debaucht.

Etymology: < (c1600) French débauch-er, in Old French desbaucher (13–14th cent.) to entice away from the service of one's master, seduce from duty, etc. Of obscure derivation. The original pronunciation after modern French, and its gradual change, are seen in the spellings debosh , debaush , deboach , debauch rhyming in 1682 with approach : see the n. See also deboise adj.French débaucher is, according to Littré and Hatzfeld, derived from a noun bauche, of which the precise sense and origin are according to the latter unknown; according to the former it = ‘a place of work, workshop’, so that desbaucher would mean originally ‘to draw away from the workshop, from one's work or duty’: so Diez. Cotgrave has bauche, ‘course of stones or bricks in building’, baucher ‘to chip, hew, or square timber, etc.; also to ranke, order, array, lay euenly’; hence desbaucher might primarily mean ‘to disorder, bring into disarray or disorder’. The sense ‘draw away from service or duty’ appears however to be the earliest in French, though that of ‘corrupt’, had also been developed before the word was taken into English.