Arson

How to spell arson

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce arson

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does arson mean?

1. nounThe criminal act of deliberately setting fire to property.

Arson in a sentence

• Investigators concluded that the warehouse fire was a clear case of arson.

• The insurance claim was denied once arson was suspected.

Where does arson come from?

Language of origin: French

The word arson comes from the Latin verb ardere, meaning 'to burn', whose past participle was arsus, 'burnt'. From this Latin developed a noun arsio (in its inflected form arsionem) meaning 'a burning'. The term travelled into English through Anglo-Norman and Old French legal language as arsoun, and it was firmly established in English law by the late 1600s to name the crime of deliberately setting fire to property. The same Latin root for burning survives in the modern word 'ardent', literally 'glowing' or 'on fire', which is a useful reminder that the middle of arson is spelled with an 'r' and 's', not the 'son' of a family member. Because the everyday word 'son' hides at the end, writers sometimes pause over whether the ending should be different, but it is simply -son built on that 'burning' root.

How the word is built

• ars- (from Latin arsus, 'burnt')
• -on (noun suffix, via French)