Arm - Arms - New Routes

“Never know how much I love you

Never know how much I care

When you put your arms around me

I get a fever that’s so hard to bear”

(Fever, by Peggy Lee https://www.vagalume.com.br/peggy-lee/fever.html)

Continuing with parts of the body, we’ll focus on verbal collocations with arm and arms in this post.
To make things easier, I searched the COCA (www.americancorpus.org) for arm*, which means the search would retrieve any word beginning with arm, so I would get collocations with arm and with arms. I also specified that I wanted this word to be preceded by a verb up to two positions. Here are the first 20 verbs I got:

1	PUT	1992
2	IS	801
3	WAS	762
4	HAVE	641
5	HAD	621
6	ARE	597
7	WERE	569
8	PUTS	568
9	CROSSED	524
10	WRAPPED	515
11	FOLDED	477
12	BE	474
13	GRABBED	468
14	‘S	442
15	TOOK	442
16	RAISED	428
17	BEAR	424
18	THREW	368
19	WAVING	354
20	JOINED	344

Discarding the verbs to be and to have, we are left with a nice list of more specific and interesting verbs. Let’s start with put.

Put

• Tentatively he tries to put his arms around her.
• Leon put his arms around me and he cried.
• I reached over and carefully put my arm around Pierre’s shoulders.

Interestingly, from the 1992 occurrences of put * arm*, 1572 are followed by around, as the examples above show. The same relationship holds true for the 3rd person singular form puts * arm*: from the 568 occurrences, 465 are followed by around:

• She laughs and puts her arms around his neck, kisses him on the lips.
• Buck goes up to him and puts his arms around him affectionately.

And notice also that in every example arm/arms is preceded by a possessive, as parts of the body usually are in English.

Wrapped

Wrapped, which occurs in position 10, denotes a similar physical gesture as put one’s arms around someone but somehow adds an affectionate note:

• He wrapped his arms around her, rubbing his hands up and down her back to generate warmth.
• She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him long and hard.
• Eliana wrapped her arms around herself to suppress a shudder.

Threw

And there is still another verb that falls into the same category, threw, in position 18 on the list:

• Jane threw her arms around her cousin and hugged her close.
• Jamie Lee Curtis immediately threw her arms around a stunned Ralph and yelled, ‘Daddy!’
• Misty-eyed, I threw my arms around my fiancé’s neck to give him a kiss.
• I nearly tumbled over when Claire appeared and threw her arms around me.

But this verb also denotes a different gesture when it is not followed by around:

• She threw her arms up in the air, as if the fire were rising before us.
• ” What?!” Nylund threw her arms in the air.
• When I asked about his critics’ claims, Fakhravar threw his arms up in frustration.

As you can see, in the above examples arms are thrown upwards, denoting despair, surprise or frustration.

Crossed and Folded

Going back to our list, we have crossed (position 9) which is very similar to folded (position 11):

• Geder crossed his arms, trying to affect an ease he didn’t feel.
• She crossed her arms and leaned back against the wall of the building.
• Brandon crossed his arms over his chest and frowned.
• She crossed her arms over her ample chest.

• Marguerite folded her arms in front of her chest.
• He folded his arms over his chest.
• She folded her arms across her chest and sighed.
• Marie folded her arms across her chest and stomped her foot on the cement.

As you can see, one usually folds/crosses one’s arm/arms over or across one’s chest. In Portuguese this would be simply rendered as ‘cruzar os braços’.

Grabbed and Took

Next we have again two similar verbs grabbed and took. The difference may be one of intensity:

• As soon as he pointed at me, I grabbed his arm, and I put him in a choke hold.
• Two guards grabbed her arms and pulled her out of the room.
• The other boy grabbed her arm and led Betty away.

Intense moment: Jack and Roxy did not appear to be getting along, as he grabbed her arm during this scene

This would correspond to ‘agarrou’ in Portuguese, while took would be a more neutral action like ‘pegou’ or ‘tomou’:

• “Careful, ma’am!” The agent took her arm and led her to a wooden bench on the shady side of the platform.
• Perry Como always took her arm or always put his arm around her.
• I took his arm and walked with him past the reception desk and back toward the dining area.

Raised

Next comes raised. Raising one’s arms can mean a lot of different things. Here are a few examples:
• I raised my arms to shield my eyes from its glare.
• It was all he could do to raise his arms and protect his face from the branches.
• He raised his arms and kept his dark eyes focused on mine.
• Mom and Dad shook their heads and raised their arms, but we knew they understood.

• Can they raise their arms above their head and hold them there.
• Inhale and raise your arms slightly; exhale and lower.

• You pump your fists and raise your arms in victory, but what else is going on in your body?
• She thought he would yell and raise his arms in triumph.
• She laughs with amazing gusto and raises her arms like a runner winning a marathon.

Bear

Now take a look at some examples with bear arms:

• The second amendment is the right to bear arms.
• Right to bear arms doesn’t make us safer.
• The right to keep and bear arms includes the right for a law-abiding citizen to do so in self-defense.

You have probably noticed that these are quite different arms, right? Here is what to bear arms means:

But the expression “a right to bear arms” has given rise to some humor:

Do you understand the play on words?

Waving

Next is waving:

• He was waving his arms over his head in an X.
• “Oh, there he is!” my mother cried out, dramatically waving her arms.
• A few of the men went over to them, waving their arms. The Eskimos just stared, still as stones.

Joined

And finally we have joined but you will see that because the search was made using arm* (I wanted to get the singular and plural forms of arm, remember?), I also got army:

• Hanh was good at cooking before she joined the Army.
• At the height of the war in Vietnam, Joe Haldeman joined the Army when he got a draft notice.
• After graduating from law school in 1966, he joined the Army for two years.

That’s it for today!

Now, don’t just sit there with your arms crossed staring into space! Get up, grab someone’s arm and share some of the things you’ve learned here.

Have fun!

Stella

_________________________________________________

Stella E. O. Tagnin professora associada do Departamento de Letras Modernas, FFLCH, da USP. Embora aposentada, continua orientando em nível de pós-graduação nas áreas de Tradução, Terminologia, Ensino e Aprendizagem, sempre com base na Lingüística de Corpus. É coordenadora do Projeto CoMET.

e-mail: seotagni@usp.br.

Arm – Arms

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