ARK

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does Ark mean? 

• ARK (noun)
  The noun ARK has 2 senses:

1. (Judaism) sacred chest where the ancient Hebrews kept the two tablets containing the Ten Commandments

2. a boat built by Noah to save his family and animals from the flood

  Familiarity information: ARK used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ARK (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(Judaism) sacred chest where the ancient Hebrews kept the two tablets containing the Ten Commandments

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

Ark; Ark of the Covenant

Instance hypernyms:

chest (box with a lid; used for storage; usually large and sturdy)

Domain category:

Judaism (the monotheistic religion of the Jews having its spiritual and ethical principles embodied chiefly in the Torah and in the Talmud)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A boat built by Noah to save his family and animals from the flood

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("ark" is a kind of...):

boat (a small vessel for travel on water)

 Context examples 

An early example of fake news has been found in the 3000-year-old Babylonian story of Noah and the Ark, which is widely believed to have inspired the Biblical tale.

(‘Trickster god’ used fake news in Babylonian Noah story, University of Cambridge)

If you two gent'lmen, gent'lmen growed, said Mr. Peggotty, don't ex-cuse me for being in a state of mind, when you understand matters, I'll arks your pardon.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

This cantle of wood is from the true cross, this other from Noah his ark, and the third is from the door-post of the temple of the wise King Solomon.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I longed to show them a tearing American gallop, for they trotted solemnly up and down, in their scant habits and high hats, looking like the women in a toy Noah's Ark.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

When the sun grew so high this morning that it struck the top of the great gateway opposite my window, the high spot which it touched seemed to me as if the dove from the ark had lighted there.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

The furniture once appropriated to the lower apartments had from time to time been removed here, as fashions changed: and the imperfect light entering by their narrow casement showed bedsteads of a hundred years old; chests in oak or walnut, looking, with their strange carvings of palm branches and cherubs' heads, like types of the Hebrew ark; rows of venerable chairs, high-backed and narrow; stools still more antiquated, on whose cushioned tops were yet apparent traces of half-effaced embroideries, wrought by fingers that for two generations had been coffin-dust.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Smith realised this tablet told the same story as Noah and the Ark in the Biblical book of Genesis.

(‘Trickster god’ used fake news in Babylonian Noah story, University of Cambridge)

Did you give your son the name of Ham, because you lived in a sort of ark?

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Once the ark is built, Uta–napishti and his family clamber aboard and survive with a menagerie of animals.

(‘Trickster god’ used fake news in Babylonian Noah story, University of Cambridge)

I sought no shelter, therefore, but the sky; and toiling into Chatham,—which, in that night's aspect, is a mere dream of chalk, and drawbridges, and mastless ships in a muddy river, roofed like Noah's arks,—crept, at last, upon a sort of grass-grown battery overhanging a lane, where a sentry was walking to and fro.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)