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A section for all you budding etymologists where each week the origin of a word or phrase is investigated.
This week it is..... Up in arms
Roused; incensed.
The original usage of ‘up in arms’ was entirely literal.
To be ‘in arms’ or ‘at arms’ was to be equipped with
weapons and armour. It isn’t clear why ‘arms’ was
chosen as the name for weaponry. It may be as simple
as a sword or club being seen as an extension of the
arm. ‘Armour’ is just a form of defensive weaponry
that a soldier was clad in. Like ‘vesture’, meaning ‘that
which a person is dressed in’, that is, clothes, the ‘ure’
part may be translated as something like ‘collection of’.
The spelling would be more properly ‘armure’, which is
how it was spelled in early texts; for example: Robert of
Gloucester’s Metrical Chronicle, 1297:
He & hys armure...
The style and decoration of armour was how knights
were distinguished from one another in battle. This was
important, as knights were more ٝ[