Phrase guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.
No pronunciation record was provided for this word.
noun
The idea that history has a direction or purpose that “bends” (or can be bent) towards some goal.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
History
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”.
