Library / English Dictionary

ARC

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

Irregular inflected forms: arcked    , arcking   

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Electrical conduction through a gas in an applied electric field

Synonyms:

arc; discharge; electric arc; electric discharge; spark

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural phenomena

Hypernyms ("arc" is a kind of...):

electrical conduction (the passage of electricity through a conductor)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "arc"):

brush discharge (discharge between electrodes creating visible streamers of ionized particles)

corona; corona discharge; corposant; electric glow; Saint Elmo's fire; Saint Elmo's light; Saint Ulmo's fire; Saint Ulmo's light; St. Elmo's fire (an electrical discharge accompanied by ionization of surrounding atmosphere)

flashover (an unintended electric discharge (as over or around an insulator))

Sense 2

Meaning:

A continuous portion of a circle

Classified under:

Nouns denoting two and three dimensional shapes

Hypernyms ("arc" is a kind of...):

curve; curved shape (the trace of a point whose direction of motion changes)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "arc"):

limb (the graduated arc that is attached to an instrument for measuring angles)

Holonyms ("arc" is a part of...):

circle (ellipse in which the two axes are of equal length; a plane curve generated by one point moving at a constant distance from a fixed point)

sector (a plane figure bounded by two radii and the included arc of a circle)

Derivation:

arc (form an arch or curve)

arcuate (forming or resembling an arch)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Something curved in shape

Synonyms:

arc; bow

Classified under:

Nouns denoting two and three dimensional shapes

Hypernyms ("arc" is a kind of...):

curve; curved shape (the trace of a point whose direction of motion changes)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "arc"):

rainbow (an arc of colored light in the sky caused by refraction of the sun's rays by rain)

Derivation:

arc (form an arch or curve)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Form an arch or curve

Example:

her hips curve nicely

Synonyms:

arc; arch; curve

Classified under:

Verbs of walking, flying, swimming

Hypernyms (to "arc" is one way to...):

bend; flex (form a curve)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "arc"):

camber (curve upward in the middle)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s
Somebody ----s something

Derivation:

arc (a continuous portion of a circle)

arc (something curved in shape)

Credits

 Context examples: 

At such moments, starting from a windward roll, I would go flying through the air with dizzying swiftness, as though I clung to the end of a huge, inverted pendulum, the arc of which, between the greater rolls, must have been seventy feet or more.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

On discussing the situation, we determined that our best course was to continue to coast round the plateau in the hope of finding some other means of reaching the top. The line of cliffs, which had decreased considerably in height, had already begun to trend from west to north, and if we could take this as representing the arc of a circle, the whole circumference could not be very great.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Although its exact mechanism of action is unknown, chlorzoxazone (CZ) appears to act at the spinal cord and subcortical levels of the brain to inhibit multisynaptic reflex arcs involved in producing and maintaining muscle spasms.

(Chlorzoxazone, NCI Thesaurus)

An Atlas V rocket traced a blazing arc into the Florida sky Thursday evening to send a small robotic explorer on its way to an asteroid on a mission that scientists anticipate will reveal answers to some of the basic questions about the solar system.

(Evening Launch Catapults OSIRIS-REx Toward Asteroid Encounter, NASA)

One of these disturbances is an arc about 20 percent brighter than its surroundings, 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) long and 6 miles (10 kilometers) wide.

(Possible New Moon Forming Around Saturn, NASA)

The red arcs are narrow, curved lines on the moon's surface, and are among the most unusual color features on Saturn's moons to be revealed by Cassini's cameras.

(Unusual Red Arcs Spotted on Icy Saturn Moon, NASA)

Where a sinking, or subducting, oceanic plate dives beneath another oceanic plate, an island arc of volcanoes forms.

(Major deep carbon sink linked to microbes at volcanic island chains, National Science Foundation)

The Ghost has attained the southernmost point of the arc she is describing across the Pacific, and is already beginning to edge away to the west and north toward some lone island, it is rumoured, where she will fill her water-casks before proceeding to the season’s hunt along the coast of Japan.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

However, in this case, the gravitational field of a massive foreground galaxy cluster not only amplified the light from the background galaxy but also smeared the image of it into an arc (about 2 arcseconds long).

(NASA's Great Observatories Team Up to Find Magnified and Stretched Image of Distant Galaxy, NASA)

The red arcs must be geologically young because they cut across older features like impact craters.

(Unusual Red Arcs Spotted on Icy Saturn Moon, NASA)