arc of history
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: 4.18 in modern English
23
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
4
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "If Jim Yong Kim wants to ‘bend the arc of history’, he should start by addressing long-standing inequalities in his own organisation[.]"
- "If Obama’s interests run toward history, so does his rhetoric. “It's the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day,” he said the evening of his first election."
- "We understand the great arc of human history bends towards people coming together in ever greater numbers — from tribes to cities to nations — to achieve things we couldn’t on our own."
- "The nationalist was urging his listeners to question the prevailing narrative, to think the unthinkable, to bend the arc of history."
- "For the roughly half a million members here, many of whom joined in the wake of Covid-19 pandemic and two Donald Trump inaugurations, the arc of history feels more like a freefall."
Etymology
Popularized by Barack Obama, and based on an older metaphor by abolitionist Theodore Parker, later popularized by Martin Luther King Jr.: “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”.
Inflected Forms
the arc of history (canonical)
arcs of history (plural)