Ramify comes from Middle French ramifier, from Medieval Latin ramificare, from Latin ramus ('branch') + -ficare (from facere, 'to make'). The historical chain includes Medieval Latin ramificare and Latin ramus. The quoted older senses, "branch" and "to make", supply the semantic anchors for ramify. The formation is best read as suffixal and borrowed: the word ramify carries its older form-history into a compact English lexical shape. In present English it is used as a verb, "to divide or spread out into branches". English derivatives include ramification; related English forms include ramus, ramose, and ramification. The result is a verb whose etymology preserves both the older form and the later English specialization.