arête

Forms

arête f (plural arêtes)^[1] Old French areste.^[2][3] Written arreste in the 14th–16th centuries, arrête in 1680 and arête from 1701.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old French areste, inherited from Latin arista (“awn, ear of grain”), through a dialectal Latin form *arēsta.^{[2][3][6][5][1]} In Late Latin (Ausonius, 4th century) the word took the sense “fishbone” by likeness of shape, a sense that passed into most Romance languages.^[5][6][4]

Cognate with Italian resta, Portuguese aresta and Walloon arièse;^[4][6] Bloch and Wartburg note that the classical Latin form still lives in Franco-Provençal.^[4][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

From the early 12th century it named the awns of grasses and the ears of grain, a sense it kept until the 17th century in competition with barbe, and which lives on in the dialects.^[5] The Grand Robert dates areste in this botanical sense to 1180–1190.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Other senses from the same Latin idea of a long, thin part of a plant, “stalk of flax or hemp” (12th century, Rashi, until the 16th century) and, in the plural, “thorny shrubs” (1538), have disappeared.^[5] The later Latin sense won out: areste “fishbone” is found in the 13th century, and by extension the whole skeleton of a fish in the 15th;^[5] grande arête “backbone” is recorded in 1845, and arêtes de poisson names a herringbone pattern of oblique lines (1887, in marquetry).^[5]

In 1262 the word took the metaphorical sense “line where two planes meet”, in the langue d'oïl as well as in Franco-Provençal (for a mountain ridge) and Occitan (for a roof ridge).^[5] It was applied to the projecting angle of a wall or beam (1585), the angle of a vault and a wall (1636), the edges of a crystal (1751) and of a geometrical solid (1810), the raised line on a sword blade (1611) and the edge of a ski (1939); l'arête du nez is of the 20th century.^[5][7] The geographical sense “mountain ridge” is in the Académie's supplement of 1838.^[7]

Timeline

• early 12th century – Used for the awns and ears of grasses.^[5]
• 1180–1190 – Areste in the botanical sense.^[2]
• 1262 – First used for the line where two planes meet.^[5]
• 13th century – Areste “fishbone”.^[5]
• 1636 – The angle of a vault and a wall.^[5]
• 1680 – Written arrête.^[5]
• 1701 – The spelling arête.^[5]
• 1810 – The edge of a geometrical solid.^[5]
• 1838 – The sense “mountain ridge” in the Académie's supplement.^[7]
• 1939 – The edge of a ski.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. A fishbone;^[8][3][4] grande arête: the backbone of a fish.^[8][3][4]
2. (botany) The awn or beard of the ear of certain grasses.^[8][9][4]
3. (mathematics) An edge of a polyhedron, or of a graph.^[8][1]
4. The line where two planes or surfaces meet; the ridge of a roof, the bridge of the nose;^[8][4][1] à vive arête: with sharp, square edges.^[8][4][1]
5. (architecture) The groin of a vault, the angle it makes with a wall or another vault.^[8][4][1]
6. (geography) A mountain ridge, a crest.^[1][7][4]
7. Arête de poisson: a herringbone arrangement, as of paving stones laid diagonally.^[3][9]

Word family

• arêtier
• arêtière
• désarêter
• arêteux

Related words

• Latin arista

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
3. ^ a b c d e Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
6. ^ a b c d Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
7. ^ a b c d e Quemada, Bernard, ed. (1959–2006), Datations et documents lexicographiques (Base historique du vocabulaire français, BHVF), Paris: Klincksieck / CNRS / Champion; ATILF
8. ^ a b c d e f g Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ a b Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard