arch / arch-

27 February 2026

Arch, in English, encompasses three broad senses. It can be a combining form signifying chief or high as in archangel or archbishop, it can mean clever or cleverly humorous, and it can mean a curved structure or to make a curved structure.

Of these, the combining form, arch-, is the oldest, dating to before the Norman Conquest. The combining form comes from the Greek ἀρχι- (arci-), as in ἀρχάγγελος (arcagelos). Borrowed into Latin, the Greek took the form arch-. In Old English, the original such combining form was heah-, the root of our modern high, as in heahbiscop or heahengel. But eventually Old English borrowed the Latin arch-, and heahbisecop became arcebisceop. In Middle English, under the influence of Anglo-Norman French, the arce- form became arch-, and we got words like archangel.

By the latter half of the sixteenth century, the combining form started to be used as a standalone adjective signifying chief or principal. Here we see arch so used in a translation from Latin of a 1574 biography of Matthew Parker, the seventieth (and first Protestant) archbishop of Canterbury:

For who woulde haue beeleued / that anye man / not in the behalfe off him selfe / but in the fauour off anye thoughe neuer / so arch a Prelate / would wrighte suche thinges / as you haue hearde heere.

About a century later, this use of arch started to be used to mean rogueish. We see both the older and the newer senses used back to back in the 1684 second part of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress:

Greath[eart]. Above all that Christian met with after he had past throw Vanity-Fair, one By-ends was the arch one.

Hon. By-ends; What was he?”

Greath. A very arch Fellow, a downright Hypocrite; one that would be Religious, which way ever the World went, but so cunning, that he would be sure neither to lose, nor suffer for it.

And by the early eighteenth century arch was being used in the sense of waggish or playful, especially in a conscious and affected manner. We see it in the 1–4 July 1710 issue of The Tatler in which Isaac Bickerstaff tells how actor Thomas Doggett asked him to make mention of his latest play:

Dogget thanked me for my Visit to him in the Winter; and after his comick Manner, spoke his Request with so arch a Leer, that I promised the Drole I would speak to all my Aquaintance to be at his Play.

(Isaac Bickerstaff is a pseudonym used in The Tatler by Richard Steele, Joseph Addison, and Jonathan Swift. I don’t know which one penned this one.)

Arch meaning a curved structure comes from a different root. It’s a fourteenth century borrowing from the Old French arche, which in turn coms from the Latin arca (chest, coffer) and arcus (bow), from the curved shape of both. We see this sense in John Trevisa’s 1387 translation of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon. The passage is part of a description of the city of Rome, and Trevisa uses arch to translate the Latin arcus:

Fast by þat temple is an arche of marbel, and is þe arche of Augustus Cesar his victories and grete dedes. In þat arche beeþ all Augustus Cesar his dedes descryued. Þere is also Scipions arche; he ouercom Hanibal.

(Close by that temple is an arch of marble, and it is the arch of Augustus Caesar, his victories, and great deeds. In that arch all of Augustus Caesar’s deeds are described. There is also Scipio’s arch; he overcame Hannibal.)

Sources:

Bickerstaff, Isaac. The Tatler, 1–4 July 1710, no. 193, 1/1–2. In The Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., vol. 1. London: John Morphew, 1710  Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim’s Progress from this World to that which Is to Come: The Second Part. London: Nathaniel Ponder, 1684, 165. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Dictionary of Old English: A to Le, 2024, s.v. arce-

Higden, Ranulf. Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden Monachi Cestrensis; together with the English Translations of John Trevisa and of an Unknown Writer of the Fifteenth Century, vol. 1. Churchill Babingon, ed. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1865, 215. Archive.org.

The Life off the 70. Archbishopp off Canterbury Presentlye Sittinge Englished. Zurich: 1574, sig. D.vii.r. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Middle English Dictionary, 3 January 2026, s.v arch(e n.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, 1885, s.v. arch- comb. form, arch adj. & n., arch v.1, arch n.1.

Photo credit: David Wilton, 2025. Licensable under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.