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arson

nounverbnounattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈɑːsən//
  • United States//ˈɑɹsən//

The crime of deliberately starting a fire with intent to cause damage.

noun

  1. 1

    The crime of deliberately starting a fire with intent to cause damage.

    carry out an arson attack

    Arson, like we thought. three punks doused a car, lit it, and took off.

Etymology

From Anglo-Norman and Old French arson, from the verb ardoir, from Latin ardeō (“to burn”). Compare ardent.

verb

  1. 1

    To illegally set fire to; to burn down in a criminal manner.

noun

  1. 1

    obsoleteA saddlebow.

    The kyng of Englande mounted on a freſhe courſer, the trapper of clothe of golde, of Tiſſue, the Arſon mantell wiſe[…]

    Arcione, the arſon or ſaddle bowe.

    […]And putting vp good ſtore of gold and Iewels for that iourney, and taking with him a good horſe, that was browne Bay, with a Petronell hanging at the arſon of his Saddle[…]

Etymology

From Middle English arsoun, from Old French arçon, from Vulgar Latin *arciō (“saddlebow”), from Latin arcus (“bow”); compare Italian arcione, Portuguese arção, and Spanish arzón.

Forms

plural
arsons
past tense
arsoned
past participle
arsoned
present participle
arsoning
third person singular
arsons
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).