arrant

Etymology

A variant of errant, from Middle English erraunt [and other forms], from Anglo-Norman erraunt, from Old French errant, the present participle of errer (“to walk (to); to wander (to); (figuratively) to travel, voyage”), and then: * from Vulgar Latin iterō (compare Late Latin itinerō, itineror (“to travel, voyage”)), from Latin iter (“a route (including a journey, trip; a course; a path; a road)”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁ey- (“to go”); and * from Latin errāns (“straying, errant; wandering”), the present active participle of errō (“to rove, wander; to get lost, go astray; to err, wander from the truth”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁ers- (“to flow”). The original sense was sense 3 (“roving around, wandering”). Due to the word being used to describe disreputable persons who wandered about (for example, arrant knave and arrant thief), it came to be used as an intensifier (sense 1: “complete; downright; utter”) and to have a negative meaning (sense 2: “very bad; despicable”).

adj

1. (chiefly with a negative connotation, dated) Complete; downright; utter.
   an arrant knave    arrant nonsense
   And is not this Arrant nonſenſe? VVhat could he mean by ſuch ſtuff? Or could any Man in his VVits vvrite it? 1708, Thomas Bennet, “That the Primitive Christians in the Fourth Century, Join’d in the Use of Diverse Precompos’d Set Forms of Prayer, besides the Lord’s Prayer and Psalms, Prov’d from St. Epiphanius”, in A Brief History of the Joint Use of Precompos’d Set Forms of Prayer;[…], 2nd edition, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Printed at the University, for Edmund Jeffery,[…]; and to be sold by James Knapton[…], →OCLC, page 187
   Cyril [Lucaris] then sent the document to Geneva, where the confession was printed in a Latin version. The publication of it created a sensation in Europe. Here was the first ecclesiastic in the Greek Church professing the most thorough-going Protestant tenets, even echoing arrant Calvinism! 1908, Walter F[rederic] Adeney, “Cyril Lucar and the Reformation”, in Charles A[ugustus] Briggs, Stewart D[ingwall] F[ordyce] Salmond, editors, The Greek and Eastern Churches (The International Theological Library), New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, division II (The Modern Greek Church), page 319
   Do teenagers want cellphones because they are all arrant individualists, or is this just another example of conformity induced by mass marketing? October 9, 1999, “Ring in the new”, in The Economist, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 21
2. (by extension, dated) Very bad; despicable.
3. Obsolete form of errant (“roving around; wandering”).
   Hence arrant preachers, humming out / A common-place or two, […] 1586, William Warner, “Albion’s England”, in The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper;[…], volume IV, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson [et al.], published 1810, →OCLC, book VIII, chapter XLVI, page 610