a luminous discharge that occurs when an electric current flows between two electrodes or any other two surfaces separated by a small gap and a high potential difference
4.
(astronomy) a circular section of the apparent path of a celestial body
5.
(maths) a section of a curve, graph, or geometric figure
verb arcs, arcing, arced, arcs, arcking, arcked
6.
(intransitive) to form an arc
prefix
7.
(maths) specifying an inverse trigonometric function: usually written arcsin, arctan, arcsec, etc, or sometimes sin–1, tan–1, sec–1, etc
Word Origin
C14: from Old French, from Latin arcus bow, arch
ARC
abbreviation
1.
AIDS-related complex: an early condition in which a person infected with the AIDS virus may suffer from such mild symptoms as loss of weight, fever, etc
late 14c., originally in reference to the sun's apparent motion in the sky, from Old French arc "bow, arch, vault" (12c.), from Latin arcus "a bow, arch," from PIE root *arku- "bowed, curved" (cf. Gothic arhvazna "arrow," Old English earh, Old Norse ör; also, via notion of "supple, flexible," Greek arkeuthos, Latvian ercis "juniper," Russian rakita, Czech rokyta, Serbo-Croatian rakita "brittle willow"). Electrical sense is from 1821.
v.
1893, in the electrical sense, from arc (n.). Meaning "to move in an arc" attested by 1954. Related: Arced; arcing.
1. An old archive format for IBM PC. The format is now so obscure that it is only likely to be supported by jack-of-all-trades decompression programs such as WINZIP. 2. An edge in a tree. "branch" is a generally more common synonym. (1998-12-29)
