Rush was correct:
Farding: transitive verb, Middle English, from Anglo-French farder, of Germanic origin, akin to Old High School German faro colored. 1. To paint (the face) with cosmetics. 2. Archaic: to gloss over.
Words! Love em! We use them to build our towers of logic, or airy tree houses filled with flights of fancy!
I like this one! From:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-far2.htm
(Snip)
“A fardel was a bundle, a pack, a parcel or similar item. It came into English around 1300 from the Old French fardel, a diminutive of farde, a burden, which is still in use in the same sense in modern French, though in the form fardeau. It is said by some authorities, for example Le Petit Robert, that that derives from the Arabic fardah, half a camel load. Carrying that would be enough to make anybody grunt and sweat.
A fardel could also be a quarter of something; it’s from the Old English word that’s also the origin of fourth and of the name of the obsolete British coin, the farthing, one-quarter of an old penny. One use was as a measure of land — William Noy wrote in The Compleat Lawyer in 1651, “Two Fardells of Land make a Nooke of Land”, a nook being an old land measure of 20 acres in Northern England and Scotland.”
There you be! Shakespeare, 15th century Real Estate Law, French, and cosmetic-tology (nonce word!). (Sliding from Comic relief back to Subject, Q)