Etymology
Alteration of errant, due to use in phrase “arrant thieves” and “arrant knaves”.[1] Originally meaning wandering bandits (errant), the term came to be an intensifier due to its use as a epitaph.
Hamlet, scene i
- Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us.
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