Arms

How to spell arms

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce arms

What does arms mean?

1. nounThe two upper limbs of the human body, from shoulder to hand.
2. nounWeapons, especially firearms, carried or used in combat.
3. nounThe heraldic insignia of a family, town, or institution, as in a coat of arms.

Arms in a sentence

• She folded her arms and waited for the meeting to start.

• The treaty placed strict limits on nuclear arms.

• The university's coat of arms is stamped on every diploma.

• After the long swim his arms ached for two days.

• The soldiers were ordered to lay down their arms at dawn.

• The ancient family was granted its own arms by the crown.

Where does arms come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This single spelling actually sits on top of two different ancestors that converged in modern English. The body-part sense descends from the Old English 'earm', a native Germanic word for the upper limb, related to the Latin 'armus', meaning the shoulder or upper foreleg. The weapons sense came in later through Old French 'armes', from the Latin 'arma', which literally meant 'tools' or 'implements of war', and that same Latin 'arma' gave us 'army', 'armour' and 'armament'. The two streams share a deeper Indo-European root suggesting something that fits or joins together, which is why a body that articulates and the gear that equips a soldier ended up looking identical. The heraldic 'coat of arms' grew from the weapons sense, since a knight's shield and surcoat carried his battle insignia. Because the plural is simply formed by adding 's', the spelling rarely troubles writers, but its double life across meanings is the interesting part.

How the word is built

• arm
• -s (plural); the weapons sense derives from a separate root meaning 'tools of war'