English Explanatory Dictionary

arc of history

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. The idea that history has a direction or purpose that “bends” (or can be bent) towards some goal.

Word forms

arc of history the arc of history arcs of history

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”.

Related words

end of history Whig history story arc
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