See arc of history in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "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”.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "the arc of history",
"tags": [
"canonical"
]
},
{
"form": "arcs of history",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "arcs of history",
"def": "1"
},
"expansion": "the arc of history (plural arcs of history)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Barack Obama",
"orig": "en:Barack Obama",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
35,
49
]
],
"ref": "2012 November 27, Chris Simms, “World Bank reforms must embrace racial equality and accountability”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:",
"text": "If Jim Yong Kim wants to ‘bend the arc of history’, he should start by addressing long-standing inequalities in his own organisation[.]",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
227,
241
]
],
"ref": "2015 December 21, David A. Graham, quoting Barack Obama, “The Wrong Side of 'the Right Side of History'”, in The Atlantic:",
"text": "If Obama’s interests run toward history, so does his rhetoric. “It's the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day,” he said the evening of his first election.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
24,
30
],
[
37,
44
]
],
"ref": "2017 May 25, Mark Zuckerberg, “Mark Zuckerberg’s Commencement address at Harvard”, in The Harvard Gazette:",
"text": "We understand the great arc of human history bends towards people coming together in ever greater numbers — from tribes to cities to nations — to achieve things we couldn’t on our own.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
117,
131
]
],
"ref": "2019, Andrew Marantz, “Prologue”, in Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation, Penguin, →ISBN, page 1:",
"text": "The nationalist was urging his listeners to question the prevailing narrative, to think the unthinkable, to bend the arc of history.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
138,
152
]
],
"ref": "2025 June 26, Sam Wolfson, “On r/collapse, people are ‘kept abreast of the latest doom’. Its moderators say it’s not for everyone”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:",
"text": "For the roughly half a million members here, many of whom joined in the wake of Covid-19 pandemic and two Donald Trump inaugurations, the arc of history feels more like a freefall.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"The idea that history has a direction or purpose that “bends” (or can be bent) towards some goal."
],
"id": "en-arc_of_history-en-noun-qMOw8lUz",
"links": [
[
"history",
"history"
],
[
"direction",
"direction"
],
[
"purpose",
"purpose"
]
],
"related": [
{
"word": "end of history"
},
{
"word": "Whig history"
},
{
"word": "story arc"
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"Barack Obama",
"Martin Luther King Jr.",
"Theodore Parker"
]
}
],
"word": "arc of history"
}
{
"etymology_text": "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”.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "the arc of history",
"tags": [
"canonical"
]
},
{
"form": "arcs of history",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "arcs of history",
"def": "1"
},
"expansion": "the arc of history (plural arcs of history)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"related": [
{
"word": "end of history"
},
{
"word": "Whig history"
},
{
"word": "story arc"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"English terms with quotations",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries",
"en:Barack Obama"
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
35,
49
]
],
"ref": "2012 November 27, Chris Simms, “World Bank reforms must embrace racial equality and accountability”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:",
"text": "If Jim Yong Kim wants to ‘bend the arc of history’, he should start by addressing long-standing inequalities in his own organisation[.]",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
227,
241
]
],
"ref": "2015 December 21, David A. Graham, quoting Barack Obama, “The Wrong Side of 'the Right Side of History'”, in The Atlantic:",
"text": "If Obama’s interests run toward history, so does his rhetoric. “It's the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day,” he said the evening of his first election.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
24,
30
],
[
37,
44
]
],
"ref": "2017 May 25, Mark Zuckerberg, “Mark Zuckerberg’s Commencement address at Harvard”, in The Harvard Gazette:",
"text": "We understand the great arc of human history bends towards people coming together in ever greater numbers — from tribes to cities to nations — to achieve things we couldn’t on our own.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
117,
131
]
],
"ref": "2019, Andrew Marantz, “Prologue”, in Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation, Penguin, →ISBN, page 1:",
"text": "The nationalist was urging his listeners to question the prevailing narrative, to think the unthinkable, to bend the arc of history.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
138,
152
]
],
"ref": "2025 June 26, Sam Wolfson, “On r/collapse, people are ‘kept abreast of the latest doom’. Its moderators say it’s not for everyone”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:",
"text": "For the roughly half a million members here, many of whom joined in the wake of Covid-19 pandemic and two Donald Trump inaugurations, the arc of history feels more like a freefall.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"The idea that history has a direction or purpose that “bends” (or can be bent) towards some goal."
],
"links": [
[
"history",
"history"
],
[
"direction",
"direction"
],
[
"purpose",
"purpose"
]
],
"wikipedia": [
"Barack Obama",
"Martin Luther King Jr.",
"Theodore Parker"
]
}
],
"word": "arc of history"
}
Download raw JSONL data for arc of history meaning in English (3.2kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-09-28 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-09-02 using wiktextract (1a05e46 and e3d6d4e). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.