arrow
/ˈarəʊ
/noun
1A weapon consisting of a thin, straight stick with a sharp point, designed to be shot from a bow: I’ve never used a bow and arrow the road continues straight as an arrow...
- They stood in the trenches, weapons unsheathed and arrows nocked on bows.
- It felt as if there was one of Cupid's magical love arrows sticking straight out of my heart.
- Archery is like darts, except that the arrows are launched, not by hand, but by a recurve bow.
Synonyms
shaft, bolt, dart
literary reed
historical quarrel
1.1A mark or sign resembling an arrow, used to show direction or position: we followed a series of arrows...
- I have marked with black arrows the direction in which they could have walked to the spot they eventually stole the cab from.
- Small posts with arrows indicate the direction of the nearest phone.
- Just a few minutes into our trek to Amsterdam we mistakenly followed the way one sign was facing instead of the direction of the arrow on it.
Synonyms
pointer, indicator, marker, needle, hand, index
verb [no object, with adverbial of direction]
Move or appear to move swiftly and directly: lights arrowed down into the airport...
- Just as the ball appeared to be arrowing into the top corner of the net, Colgan palmed the ball behind to safety.
- From the distant night streaks of fire appeared, arrowing down onto the palace rooftop.
- Midway through the second half a kick which might have won the game was cruelly whipped to the left of the upright, having spent most of its trajectory arrowing right between them.
Phrases
arrow of time (or time's arrow)
Derivatives
arrowed
- ‘Me too,’ says Christopher and we rejoin the arrowed path and wander off in vaguely the direction we think we came from earlier.
- The possible refinements of TB positions are indicated by arrowed lines.
- The UI is clearly touchscreen, but it is presumably cheaper to not use a touchscreen and use arrowed buttons that point at the bits of the screen you'd touch if it were a touchscreen.
arrowy
- Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house, and began to cut down some tall, arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for timber.
- After a long ramble through the dense encumbered woods I emerged upon a smooth meadow full of sunshine like a lake of light, about a mile and a half long, a quarter to half a mile wide, and bounded by tall arrowy pines.
Origin
Old English arewe, arwe, from Old Norse.
This is from Old Norse, but is only indirectly the source of the plant called arrowroot (late 17th century). The tubers of this Caribbean plant were used to absorb poison from arrow wounds. The word is an alteration of Arawak aru-aru (literally ‘meal of meals’) to conform with the more familiar words arrow and root.