arc

Forms

arc m (plural arcs)^[1] In Old French the nominative singular was ars and the oblique arc.^[2] The Old French variants are, art, arche and ark went out of use in the 16th century.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old French arc, inherited from Latin arcus (“bow, arch”), through its accusative form.^{[3][4][5][6][1]} The word was pronounced /ar/ until the 16th century; the /k/ heard today is due to the written form,^[7][3] and Rey adds that it kept the word apart from art.^[3] Bloch and Wartburg point to the old pronunciation in the Paris street name rue Saint-André-des-Arts.^[7]

Cognate with Italian arco, Spanish arco, Portuguese arco, Occitan arc, Catalan arc and Romanian arc.^[8][7] In Latin the word named the weapon and then things shaped like a drawn bow: the rainbow, the arch and the vault.^[3] Rey calls it a word of the western Indo-European area, comparable with Old English earh, the ancestor of the English word arrow;^[3][8] Wiktionary traces it to Proto-Indo-European *h₂erkʷo-.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first recorded about 1080 in the Chanson de Roland, meaning the bow that shoots arrows: Donnez mei l'arc que vous tenez al poing (“give me the bow you hold in your fist”).^[4][5][2][3]

Semantic evolution

Old French set the hand bow, arc a main (12th century), against the arc a tour (1288), the forerunner of the crossbow, and some bows shot clay balls or stones instead of arrows.^[3] By metonymy the word also meant the range of a bow (1240).^[3] The image of the weapon lives on in avoir deux cordes à son arc (13th century), later plusieurs cordes (1611): to have more than one resource.^[3][5] Once the bow was no longer a weapon of war or hunting, the word became, from the 17th century, a term of history and ethnology, and then of sport, when archery came back as a sport.^[3]

The second Latin sense, the curved structure of a building resting on two supports, appears about 1150,^[3] with phrases such as arc doubleau (1399) and arc de triomphe, known in Anglo-Norman in 1165 and in Old French from the 12th century.^[3] The kinds of arch came to mark the styles of architecture: arc en plein cintre for Romanesque, arc brisé for Gothic, arc outrepassé for Moorish building.^[3] In the 16th century (1562) the word spread to any curved segment, a sense already found in geometry about 1474 in Chuquet and earlier in astronomy.^[3] Anatomy (1776) and electricity followed: arc voltaïque, and arc électrique in 1890, the spark between two electrodes.^[3] The third Latin sense, the rainbow, was used in Old French from the 12th to the 14th century but gave way to arc-en-ciel.^[3]

English borrowed arc, arch and archer from French in the 14th century.^[8]

Timeline

• 1080 – The Chanson de Roland uses it for the bow.^[4][5][3]
• c. 1150 – First recorded of the arch of a building.^[3]
• 1165 – An Anglo-Norman text uses it for a triumphal arch.^[3]
• 1240 – It names the range of a bow.^[3]
• 1270 – Arc en ciel “rainbow” is first written so.^[3]
• 1288 – Arc a tour, the forerunner of the crossbow, is recorded.^[3]
• 1387 – The compound arc-boutant “flying buttress” appears.^[3][7]
• c. 1474 – Chuquet uses it in geometry.^[3]
• 16th century – The pronunciation without /k/ is still usual.^[7][3]
• 1611 – Avoir plusieurs cordes à son arc is recorded.^[3]
• 1814 – It enters the vocabulary of electricity.^[3]
• 1890 – Arc électrique is recorded.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A bow, a weapon made of a flexible stave bent by a string, used to shoot arrows: tirer à l'arc.^[8][9][10]
2. (figurative) Avoir plusieurs cordes à son arc or plus d'une corde à son arc: to have more than one resource or means of succeeding.^[5][10]
3. (architecture) An arch, a curved structure spanning an opening or supporting a vault: arc de triomphe, arc en plein cintre.^[9][3]
4. (geometry) An arc, a continuous portion of a curve: arc de cercle.^[9][1]
5. Any line or shape curved like a drawn bow.^[9][5]
6. (electricity) An electric arc, the luminous discharge between two electrodes: arc électrique.^[3][1]
7. (fiction) A story arc.^[1]

Word family

• arc-en-ciel
• arceau
• arcature
• archer
• archet
• arquer
• arc-boutant

Related words

• arche
• arcade
• arçon
• arbalète
• Latin arcus

Usage notes

The Grand Robert and the Petit Robert record a separate ARC (1985), an acronym of English Aids Related Complex, the minor signs of HIV infection.^[4][8] Littré notes that the ⟨s⟩ of the plural is not pronounced: des arcs attachés is said without liaison.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
4. ^ a b c d Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
5. ^ a b c d e f Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
6. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 25, 117b
7. ^ a b c d e Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
8. ^ a b c d e Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ a b c d Dictionnaire de français Larousse, larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais (accessed 2024)
10. ^ a b Dictionnaire Le Robert en ligne, dictionnaire.lerobert.com (accessed 2024)