arrant

The word 'arrant' began its journey as a variant of 'errant', which described a person who wandered, such as a knight-errant. In Middle English, the phrase 'thief errant' evolved to mean a wandering rogue, and the adjective 'arrant' became attached to nouns of negative connotation to intensify them, implying the subject was notorious or wandering in its bad qualities. Over time, the sense of physical wandering faded entirely, leaving only the emphatic, pejorative meaning of 'thoroughgoing' or 'out-and-out'. Thus, a word for literal travel transformed into one describing the absolute extent of an abstract quality.

The word 'arrant' is a simplex form. It is a variant spelling of 'errant', which originates from the Anglo-French and Old French 'errant', meaning 'traveling, wandering'. This, in turn, derives from the Latin verb 'errare', meaning 'to wander, to stray, to err'.