arc of history
arc of history noun: the idea that history has a direction or purpose that “bends” (or can be bent) towards some goal.
Noun
the arc of history (plural arcs of history)
- The idea that history has a direction or purpose that “bends” (or can be bent) towards some goal.
- If Jim Yong Kim wants to ‘bend the arc of history’, he should start by addressing long-standing inequalities in his own organisation[.]2012 November 27, Chris Simms, “World Bank reforms must embrace racial equality and accountability”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
- If Obama’s interests run toward history, so does his rhetoric. “It's the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day,”...2015 December 21, David A. Graham, quoting Barack Obama, “The Wrong Side of 'the Right Side of History'”, in The Atlantic
Examples of arc of history in a sentence
- The nationalist was urging his listeners to question the prevailing narrative, to think the unthinkable, to bend the arc of history.2019, Andrew Marantz, “Prologue”, in Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation...
- For the roughly half a million members here, many of whom joined in the wake of Covid-19 pandemic and two Donald Trump inaugurations, the arc of history feels more like a freefall.2025 June 26, Sam Wolfson, “On r/collapse, people are ‘kept abreast of the latest doom’. Its moderators say it’s not for everyone”, in The...
Forms of arc of history
| plural | arcs of history |
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Origin of arc of history
Popularized by Barack Obama, and based on an older metaphor by abolitionist Theodore Parker, later popularized by Martin Luther King Jr.: “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”.
Questions about arc of history
- What does arc of history mean?
- Arc of history means the idea that history has a direction or purpose that “bends” (or can be bent) towards some goal.
- How do you use arc of history in a sentence?
- The nationalist was urging his listeners to question the prevailing narrative, to think the unthinkable, to bend the arc of history.
- What part of speech is arc of history?
- Arc of history is a noun.
- What is the plural of arc of history?
- The plural of arc of history is arcs of history.
Words near arc of history in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: arc of history (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: “arc of history.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/arc_of_history. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.