Information Research Weblog

Bon soir, Francoise, Indeed - it comes to us from Norman French, of course, and thence from Latin, as you might expect. In an off-list 'conversation' I reported the etymology from the OED:

[a. 14th c. Fr. ambages, a. L. ambages circuits, circumlocutions, f. amb- about + ag-ere to drive. Thoroughly naturalized in 16th c. as 'ambages, with sing. 'ambage (as in Fr.) in sense I, but owing to the coincidence of the spelling with the original L., there has been a growing tendency to look upon it as merely L., and to use it accordingly, thus restricting the sense and altering the pronunciation.]

Tom