Word.ws English Dictionary

arête

/əˈɹɛt/

arête noun: a very thin ridge of rock.

Noun

arête (plural arêtes)

  1. A very thin ridge of rock.
    • In his old department in Zürich, they sit in glass cases: models to the life of the peaks he had studied, with the strata painted beautifully and accurately, passing over arête and valley alike.2004, Richard Fortey, The Earth, Folio Society, published 2011, page 88

Forms of arête

pluralarêtes
alternative formarete

Origin of arête

Borrowed from French arête, from Latin arista. Doublet of arista.

Words that rhyme with arête

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about arête

What does arête mean?
Arête means a very thin ridge of rock.
What part of speech is arête?
Arête is a noun.
How do you pronounce arête?
Arête is pronounced /əˈɹɛt/.
What is the plural of arête?
The plural of arête is arêtes.

Words near arête in the dictionary

  1. Arâkis
  2. aræometer
  3. aræometers
  4. aræometry
  5. Arçay
  6. arête
  7. arêtes
  8. as
  9. as a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly
  10. as a duck takes to water
  11. as a lamb to the slaughter

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: arête (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “arête.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ar%C3%AAte. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.