mask

English borrowed mask from Middle French masque ("a covering to hide or protect the face"), which came from Italian maschera ("mask, disguise"), tracing back through Medieval Latin masca/mascha to Proto-West Germanic *maskā. That same Germanic root also gave English the words mesh and mask in its "mesh" sense.

The word arrived in English already meaning a face-covering, and it pushed out the older native word for the same thing: Old English grīma, which survives today only in the word grime. It also displaced the Middle English word viser, borrowed from Old French, which had covered the same idea.

Mask is a doublet of mascara, masque, and mesh — all of these trace back to the same Proto-West Germanic root, *maskā, meaning mesh or netting.