ark
UK[ɑːk]US[ɑːrk]
n
A large wooden ship built by Noah in the Bible to save his family and two of every kind of animal from a great flood.
n
A chest or box, especially one holding the sacred writings of the Jewish people (the Ark of the Covenant).
Etymology
The English word 'ark' is a direct borrowing from the Latin 'arca', meaning a chest, box, or coffer. Latin inherited this term, likely from a lost Mediterranean source, as its connection to Proto-Indo-European roots is unclear. In the Latin-to-English transmission, 'arca' was simplified to 'ark', losing its final vowel. The semantic journey is one of specialized religious adoption: the general Latin meaning of a storage chest was applied in Biblical translations to two specific, monumental containers—Noah's vast ship and the sacred chest holding the tablets of law. Thus, a simple word for a box evolved to denote objects of profound divine covenant and salvation.
Analysis
The word is a simplex loanword from Latin, ultimately of uncertain, possibly non-Indo-European origin. It functions as a complete lexical unit.
Examples
The story of Noah's ark is found in the Book of Genesis.
The Ark of the Covenant was said to house the original stone tablets of the Ten Commandments.
The museum built a detailed model of the biblical ark based on the described dimensions.