Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The sharp edge or ridge formed by two surfaces meeting at an angle, as in a molding.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A sharp edge, as of a squared stone or piece of wood. Specifically
  • noun In architecture, the line, edge, or hip in which the two straight or curved surfaces of a body, forming an exterior angle, meet; especially, the sharp ridge between two adjoining channels of a Doric column.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Arch.) The sharp edge or salient angle formed by two surfaces meeting each other, whether plane or curved; -- applied particularly to the edges in moldings, and to the raised edges which separate the flutings in a Doric column.
  • noun a triangular piece of wood used to raise the slates of a roof against a chimney or wall, to throw off the rain.
  • noun a gutter of a V form fixed to the eaves of a building.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun architecture A sharp edge or ridge formed by the intersection of two curved surfaces
  • noun UK, slang Buttocks.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Alteration of Old French areste, fishbone, spine; see arête.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French areste, from Latin arista ("beard (of grain), fishbone")

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word arris.

Examples

  • By being national they should surely have their heads up the arris' of every brave son of the red half of Liverpool.

    Premier League clockwatch | Barry Glendenning 2012

  • Best to * arris and hope she's feeling better by now.

    Road Trip grrm 2010

  • He stretched out his arm to seize the projecting arris of a larger block than ordinary, and so help himself up, when his hand lighted plump upon a substance differing in the greatest possible degree from what he had expected to seize — hard stone.

    A Pair of Blue Eyes 2006

  • If pieces of the arris root are dressed with the oil of the mango, and placed for six months in a hole made in the trunk of the sisu tree, and are then taken out and made up into an ointment, and applied to the lingam, this is said to serve as the means of subjugating women.

    The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana 2006

  • I watched some of a terrible film that I hope no one else has to suffer, called Mrs 'arris in Paris which really lowered my opinion of Angela Landsbury, who played a cockney woman.

    my loner-no friends day onlyemma 2006

  • Only the gilding of the room in some degree brought itself into keeping with the splendours outside, stray darts of light seizing upon it and lengthening themselves out along fillet, quirk, arris, and moulding, till wasted away.

    The Hand of Ethelberta 2006

  • The framework of a motor vehicle window.or, in the perhaps clearer words of the OED,A side of an opening or recess which is at right angles to the face of the work; esp. the vertical side of a doorway or window-opening between the door- or window-frame and the arris 'the sharp edge formed by the angular contact of two plane or curved surfaces'.

    languagehat.com: REVEAL. 2004

  • Screw rods are also recommended for stairs with arris for insertion.

    2. Types of Straight Wooden Stairs Rolf Becher 1993

  • In the case of inserted stairs without arris for insertion of the steps, the stair foot and stair head may be inserted in the mortise

    6. Assembly of the Stair Components Rolf Becher 1993

  • The steps may be designed with or without arris for insertion.

    2. Types of Straight Wooden Stairs Rolf Becher 1993

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • "Buttocks, 'arse'. Convoluted Cockney rhyming slang for 'arse'; Arris, an abbreviation of Aristotle, rhyming with bottle, and thereafter leading to bottle and glass rhyming with 'arse'."

    - peevish.co.uk

    September 12, 2008

  • Most of the 5000 or so known species of harvestmen or [daddy-long-legs, of order Opiliones] live in tropical South America and South-east Asia, but they also live in damp shaded areas in all climates, including the sub-arctic, and can sometimes be found in droves beneath the arris rails of fences around temperate suburban gardens.

    —Colin Tudge, The Variety of Life, p.317

    November 17, 2008