Arm
From Hull AWE
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Two words written arm form one of the sets of homophones listed by the then Poet Laureate Robert Bridges.
(For more, see Bridges homophones). AWE has a category listing our articles on each of these. The words arm are pronounced IPA: /É‘Ëm/ in RP.
- The verb 'to arm' means
- transitively 'to supply with weapons, or armaments', as in 'The USA armed its allies with copious supplies of ammunition'. Passively this can mean 'equipped', literally 'with weapons', e.g. 'the German battleship Bismarck was principally armed with 8 38 cm (~15 inch) guns; or figuratively, e.g. 'he was armed with an invincible sense of his own rightness'.
- Intransitively, often reflexively, 'to arm [oneself]' is to equip [oneself] for some comoinmg struggle, again either literally or figuratively.
- The noun 'an arm' means 'the human fore- (or upper) limb', of which the usual number is two.
- For a similar confusion of homophones, see Alms - arms.
