A few weeks ago, my husband and I were discussing words used for rooms or spaces that made no sense to us, and I brought up arcade. The only time I’ve really encountered this word “live,” so to speak, is in a video game arcade. So when I was researching Paris for The Collector of Burned Books and realized that an area of posh flats above the Champs-Elysee are also called “The Arcades,” I knew there had to be a meaning of this word that I didn’t know.
The word arcade has the hint of its root meaning right there in the word: arc, or arch. It’s from the Latin arcus, which then was used in the Italian arcata for an “arch of a bridge.” The French borrowed the word from there, using it to describe a vaulted space (hence those high-end apartments).
English adopted the word in 1731 with that same meaning and took to applying it to the spaces or passages formed by a succession of arches–think avenues of trees or a space beneath piers or pillars. By the late 1700s, it was used to refer to the spaces under a covered avenue that was lined with shops…and amusements. That’s ultimately where arcade games comes from, though that particular phrase dates only to 1977.
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. Having successfully launched two homeschool grads, she now spends her time writing fiction, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years, as well as a fantasy series and contemporary mysteries and romances. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.