Arrest

How to spell arrest

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce arrest

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does arrest mean?

1. verbTo seize a person by legal authority and take them into custody.
2. verbTo stop or check the progress of something.
3. nounThe act of seizing someone, or a sudden stop of a process such as the heart.

Arrest in a sentence

• verb

  The officers had enough evidence to arrest the suspect at the scene.

• verb

  The new medication helped arrest the spread of the infection.

• noun

  The protester was released within hours of his arrest.

• verb

  Police can arrest a driver who refuses a breath test.

• verb

  Engineers worked through the night to arrest the slow collapse of the bridge.

• noun

  The patient suffered a cardiac arrest during the night.

Where does arrest come from?

Language of origin: French

The word arrives in English from the Old French arester, meaning 'to stop, stay, or detain', which descended from the Vulgar Latin arrestare. That Latin form was built from the prefix ad-, meaning 'to', and restare, 'to remain' or 'to stand still', itself a compound of re- 'back' and stare 'to stand'. So at its literal heart, to arrest something is to make it stand still or bring it to a halt, a sense still alive in phrases like 'cardiac arrest' and 'an arresting sight'. English took the word in during the late 1300s, first with the broad meaning of stopping or detaining, and the legal sense of seizing a person by lawful authority grew naturally from that. The same restare root underlies the everyday word 'rest', which is a handy reminder that the spelling keeps a clean -rest after the doubled r.

How the word is built

• ar- (from ad-: to)
• rest (from Latin restare: to stop, stay behind)