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arêter is a common verb in French that means to stop. It is a cognate of to arrest.

The ê before the t is evidence betraying the disappearance of a historic s, which is still present in English cognates:

hôpital -> hospital

forêt -> forest

The word arête means edge, similar to bord.

Not every bord is an arête; only some protruding ridge or sharp edge. It seems to be used for geological ridges, like mountain crests and such, but evidently it can also refer to the blade of a knife or sharp too or such.



arrêter*


Thanks! Does that negate any link between the words?


French arête in the sense of "ridge" comes from Old French areste and Latin arista "bristle, fishbone", whose etymology is unclear [1] (Etruscan has been sometimes proposed, among other hypotheses), but which is certainly not related to Greek arete.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/arista#Latin




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