arsenal
pronunciation
How to pronounce arsenal in British English:
UK [ˈɑ:sənl]
How to pronounce arsenal in American English:
US [ˈɑrsənl]
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- Noun:
- all the weapons and equipment that a country has
- a military structure where arms and ammunition and other military equipment are stored and training is given in the use of arms
- a place where arms are manufactured
Word Origin
- arsenal
- arsenal: [16] The word arsenal has a complicated history, stretching back through Italian to Arabic. The Arabic original was dāras- sinā‘ah, literally ‘house of the manufacture’. This seems to have been borrowed into Venetian Italian, somehow losing its initial d, as arzaná, and been applied specifically to the large naval dockyard in Venice (which in the 15th century was the leading naval power in the Mediterranean).The dockyard is known to this day as the Arzenale, showing the subsequent addition of the -al ending. English acquired the word either from Italian or from French arsenal, and at first used it only for dockyards (‘making the Arsenal at Athens, able to receive 1000 ships’, Philemon Holland’s translation of Pliny’s Natural history 1601); but by the end of the 16th century it was coming into more general use as a ‘military storehouse’.The English soccer club Arsenal gets its name from its original home in Woolwich, south London, where there used to be a British government arsenal.
- arsenal (n.)
- c. 1500, "dockyard, dock with naval stores," from Italian arzenale, from Arabic dar as-sina'ah "workshop," literally "house of manufacture," from dar "house" + sina'ah "art, craft, skill," from sana'a "he made." Applied by the Venetians to a large wharf in their city, which was the earliest reference of the English word. Sense of "public place for making or storing weapons and ammunition" is from 1570s. The London football club (1886) was named for the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, where the original players worked.
Example
- 1. Many are now wondering how safe is pakistan 's nuclear arsenal .
- 2. Worse , it probably fears washington really wants to neutralize pakistan 's growing nuclear arsenal .
- 3. Yet if its nuclear threat remains immature , the north 's conventional arsenal poses a huge danger to the south .
- 4. More important , could the us or india stage a similar lightening air assault to destroy pakistan 's nuclear arsenal ?
- 5. With antibiotic resistance on the rise , having more weapons in our antibacterial arsenal is not a bad idea .