maquis: [20] The French word maquis literally means ‘undergrowth, scrub’, and its use for the resistance fighters who opposed German occupation during World War II is an allusion to their hide-outs in scrubby country. It is a borrowing, via Corsica, of Italian macchia. This originally meant ‘spot’ (it came from Latin macula ‘spot, stain’, source of English immaculate and mail ‘armour’), but was transferred metaphorically to a ‘bush or thicket seen from the distance as a spot on a hillside’. => immaculate, mail
