.
4683 . 20230404
...drew a border line up and down the country, writing a Here and a There in the sandy earth. Under it, however, countless watery question marks and intertwining letters tugged...
— Esther Kinsky, River (2014; Iain Galbraith, trans., 2018) : 171
—
march (n.2)
“a frontier, boundary of a country; border district,” early 13c., from Old French marche “boundary, frontier,” from Frankish *marka or some other Germanic source (compare Old Saxon marka, Old English mearc; Old High German marchon “to mark out, delimit,” German Mark “boundary”)... Now obsolete. Related: Marches.
...but as it came to mean “borderland” in many languages, other words were shifted or borrowed...
— Online Etymology Dictionary : link