Arbor

How to spell arbor

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce arbor

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does arbor mean?

1. nounA shaded garden structure of latticework or trained trees and shrubs on which climbing plants grow.

Arbor in a sentence

• They planted climbing roses to cover the wooden arbor at the end of the path.

• A stone bench sat in the cool shade beneath the leafy arbor.

Where does arbor come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word has a tangled double history that explains why its meaning splits in two. The mechanical sense comes straight from the Latin arbor, which simply meant 'tree', and from there 'a main beam or trunk-like support', so by extension the central shaft or spindle on which a wheel or cutting tool is mounted. The garden sense actually started somewhere else: it grew from the Old French erbier, a grassy plot or lawn, which traces back to the Latin herba meaning 'grass' or 'herb'. Medieval English took this in as 'herber', a shaded retreat planted with grass and climbing greenery, and over time the spelling drifted toward 'arbor' under the influence of the unrelated Latin arbor 'tree', since such bowers were so often made of trained trees and shrubs. The two strands eventually settled into the single spelling we now write. British and Canadian writers keep the spelling 'arbour' for the garden bower but use 'arbor' for the machine part, which is exactly the trap that makes this word easy to second-guess.

How the word is built

• arbor (from Latin arbor: tree); in the garden sense reshaped from Old French erbier (a grassy plot, from Latin herba: grass, herb)

British and American spelling

Arbor is the American spelling. British English spells it arbour.