arc
UK/ɑːk//ɑɹk/
arc noun: that part of a circle which a heavenly body appears to pass through as it moves above and below the horizon. Also the ellipsis of story arc.
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Noun (1)
arc (plural arcs)
- That part of a circle which a heavenly body appears to pass through as it moves above and below the horizon.
- A continuous part of the circumference of a circle (circular arc) or of another curve.
- The arc of a circle may be very little, but, given that, it is possible to construct the entire figure.1914, Ernest Bramah, Max Carrados
- A curve, in general.
- Swing it from side to side in a high arc overhead.
- an arc of pupils around their teacher.
- A band contained within parallel curves, or something of that shape.
- A flow of current across an insulating medium; especially a hot, luminous discharge either between two electrodes or as lightning.
- A period or phase in a person's life.
- I'm hitting the gym three times a week or more at the moment. I'm in my gym bro arc.
- I miss my drawing arc. I feel like I was much more creative back then.
- A continuous mapping from a real interval (typically [0, 1]) into a space.
- A directed edge.
- Synonyms:
- arrow, directed edge
- The three-point line.
- An arclight.
- For all practical purposes the old carbon arcs, which were the backbone of film lighting, are no longer used.2012, Kris Malkiewicz, Film Lighting
Verb
arc (third-person singular simple present arcs, present participle arcing or (rare) arcking, simple past and past participle arced or (rare) arcked)
- To move following a curved path.
- A warring bloodhunter detected it and skillfully arced his sword through its spinal column before it could return to follow through with its attack.2008, T. R. Elmore, Blood Ties Series, Volume 1, Tainted, Book 1, page 106
- Gatland's side got back to within striking distance when fly-half Jones's clever pass sent centre Jonathan Davies arcing round Shontayne Hape.2011 February 4, Gareth Roberts, “Wales 19-26 England”, in BBC Sport, archived from the original on 26 Nov 2020
- To shape into an arc; to hold in the form of an arc.
- His mother, her eyes raised to heaven, hands arked before her, moving, made real for John that patience, that endurance, that long suffering, which he had read in the Bible and found so hard to image.1953, James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain, New York, N.Y.: Knopf, →OCLC, part 1 (The Seventh Day)
- To form an electrical arc.
Noun (2) capitalized: ARC
ARC (countable and uncountable, plural ARCs)
- Acronym of advance reader's copy, a copy of a book given to a reviewer free in advance for review purposes.
- “One of them came up to me in a signing line and asked for a blurb,” says Jen. “Can you believe it? Title I’ve never heard of, from some small press I’ve never heard of, and she comes up to me with a bound ARC, beaming, like of course I’m going to say yes.”2023, R. F. Kuang, Yellowface, The Borough Press, page 90
- Initialism of AIDS-related complex.
- Acronym of automatic reference counting.
Proper noun (1) capitalized: ARC
ARC
- Initialism of American Red Cross.
Proper noun (2) capitalized: ARC
ARC
- The Colombian Navy (Armada de la República de Colombia).
Adjective capitalized: ARC
ARC (not comparable)
Proper noun (3) capitalized: Arc
Arc
- A suggested location where the historical figure Joan of Arc, or her father, were from.
Also used as
arc is also the ellipsis of story arc.
arc meaning in Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati and Tagalog
arc in Telugu
- చాపం
arc in Malayalam
- geometry: part of a curve
- ചാപം cāpaṁ
arc in Gujarati
- ચાપ
arc in Tagalog
- geometry: part of a curve
- bantok
- curve
- bantok
More languagesFewer languages
- arc in Arabic
- قَوْس qaws, مُنْحَنَى munḥanā
- arc in Malay
- arka, lengkung, lengkuk, lengkok
- arc in Persian
- قوس qows, کمان kamân, خم xam
- arc in Vietnamese
- vòng cung
Examples of arc in a sentence
- We need to be sure these maps are accurate to within one minute of arc.
- He troweled the coarse mix with a twist, leaving a pattern of arcs.
- The Nimrods shot an amazingly futile 2-for-45 from behind the arc.
Synonyms of arc
Forms of arc
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | arcs |
| plural | ARCs |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | arcs |
| present participle | arcing |
| past participle | arced |
| past | arced |
| present participle (rare) | arcking |
| past participle (rare) | arcked |
| past (rare) | arcked |
Origin of arc
Inherited from Middle English ark, from Old French arc, from Latin arcus (“a bow, arc, arch”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂erkʷos (“bow, arrow”). Doublet of arch, arco, and arrow.
An abbreviation.
Borrowed from Spanish ARC.
Words formed from arc
- arc blast
- arc-boutant
- arc-connected
- arc converter
- arc cosecant
- arc cosine
- arc cotangent
- arcdegree
- arc elasticity
- arc eye
- arc fault
- arc-fault circuit interrupter
- arc flash
- arc-form pearly mussel
- arc-hyperbolic function
- arcjet
- arc-lamp
- arc lamp
- arclength
- arc length
- arclet
- arc light
- arclike
- arc minute
- arcminute
- arc of history
- arcover
- arc-over
- arc resistance
- arc secant
- arcsecond
- arc second
- arc-second
- arc spring
- arc transmitter
- arcual
- arcweld
- arc weld
- arc welder
- arc welder's disease
- arc welding
- backarc
- behind the arc
- biarc
- carbon arc
- character arc
- circumhorizontal arc
- diurnal arc
- electric arc
- electric arc furnace
- forearc
- great-circle arc
- great circle arc
- hyperarc
- island arc
- mercury arc rectifier
- minute of arc
- multiarc
- narrative arc
- nocturnal arc
Phrases with arc
- arc up
- Des Arc
- arc lamps
- arc welds
- story arc
- xenon arc
- arc blasts
- arc faults
- arc lights
- arc welded
- reflex arc
- arc boutant
32 more phrasesFewer phrases
- arc cosines
- arc flashes
- arc lengths
- arc minutes
- arc secants
- arc seconds
- arc springs
- arc welders
- Joan of Arc
- penalty arc
- Poulsen arc
- Arc de Trump
- circular arc
- Joans of Arc
- subhelic arc
- tropical arc
- arc cosecants
- Nastapoka Arc
- second of arc
- arc converters
- arc cotangents
- minutes of arc
- redemption arc
- redemptive arc
- seconds of arc
- xenon arc lamp
- Arc de Triomphe
- arc elasticities
- arc transmitters
- electric arc furnaces
- Izu-Bonin-Mariana Arc
- mercury arc rectifiers
Words that rhyme with arc
28 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about arc
- What does arc mean?
- Arc means that part of a circle which a heavenly body appears to pass through as it moves above and below the horizon.
- What is arc in Telugu?
- Arc in Telugu is చాపం. See Arc meaning in Telugu.
- What part of speech is arc?
- Arc can be a noun, a verb, a proper noun or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce arc?
- Arc is pronounced /ɑːk/ (UK).
- What is the plural of arc?
- The plural of arc is arcs.
Words near arc in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: arc (page history and authors); ARC (page history and authors); Arc (page history and authors); arc (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); arc (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-arc.ogg.
Cite this entry: “arc.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/arc. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.