Word.ws English Dictionary

arses

arses is the plural of arse.

arses is the plural of arsis.

arses is the third-person singular simple present indicative of arse.

Meaning of arse

Noun

arse (plural arses)

  1. (Commonwealth, vulgar) A person's buttocks; the bottom, the backside. Also: the anus; the rectum.
    • As the novel progresses, he is shot in the hand with his own gun, shot in the arse with someone else's and lacerated by a prosthetic weed trimmer.2011 March 12, James Smart, The Guardian
  2. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, derogatory, slang, vulgar) A stupid, pompous, arrogant, mean or despicable person.
    • “You're an arse,” Ellen said. ¶ “Please? You must like something about me …?” ¶ “I do. You're an arse. I just told you that. I feel comfy with you, because you're such an arse.”2007, Martin Harrison, The Judgement of Paris, page 282
  3. (slang, uncountable, vulgar) Used in similes to express something bad or unpleasant.
  4. (countable, metonymically, slang, vulgar) A person; the self; (reflexively) oneself or one's person, chiefly their body; (by extension) one's personal safety, or figuratively one's job, prospects, etc.

See all 6 meanings of arse

Meaning of arsis

Noun

arsis (countable and uncountable, plural arses)

  1. The stronger part of a musical measure: the part containing the beat.
  2. The stronger part of a metrical foot: the part containing the long (heavy) syllable in quantitative meter, or the stressed syllable in a qualitative meter.
    • it comes to pass that the arsis may effect some change in the order of which it is itself the commencement1830, Johann Gottfried Jacob Hermann, Hermann's Elements of the Doctrine of Metres
  3. The elevation of the hand, or that part of the bar at which it is raised, in beating time; the weak or unaccented part of the bar, opposed to the thesis.
  4. The elevation of the voice to a higher pitch in speaking.

See all 5 meanings of arsis

Phrases with arses

Questions about arses

What is arses the plural of?
Arses is the plural of arse.

Words near arses in the dictionary

  1. arsepanes
  2. arsephenamine
  3. arsephenamines
  4. arsepine
  5. arsepines
  6. arses
  7. arses about
  8. arses around
  9. arses in a sling
  10. arses in slings
  11. arses like Japanese flags

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: arses (page history and authors); arse (page history and authors); arsis (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: “arses.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/arses. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.