What does arco mean?
Arco is a musical term used in scores for string instruments such as the violin, viola, cello, and double bass. It instructs the performer to play with the bow, producing sustained, singing tones, and it most often appears after a pizzicato passage to signal that the player should stop plucking and resume bowing. The word comes from Italian, where arco means 'bow,' ultimately tracing back to the Latin arcus, meaning bow or arch — the same root that gives us 'arc' and 'arcade.' Though grammatically a noun in Italian, in English musical practice arco functions as a performance direction, sitting alongside terms like pizzicato, legato, and staccato. It is specialist vocabulary, familiar to musicians and concertgoers but rare elsewhere, yet it captures one of the most fundamental contrasts in string playing: the difference between the plucked and the bowed voice of an instrument.
nounA musical direction instructing a string player to play with the bow, rather than plucking the strings; used chiefly after a pizzicato passage.
- A musical direction telling a string player to perform with the bow rather than plucking (pizzicato).
"The cellist lifted her bow and returned to arco for the final phrase of the movement."
"After the delicate pizzicato section, the violins resumed arco, filling the hall with rich sustained sound."
"The score marks 'arco' above the double bass part at the start of the second movement."
Rarely pluralized in practice, since arco usually appears as a single performance direction in a score.
"The edition included several arcos marked throughout the cello part."
Every time a violinist stops plucking and picks up the bow again, they're obeying a command written in Italian centuries ago — 'arco' literally means 'bow.'
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of arco
Arco comes directly from Italian, in which it means 'bow' — both the archer's weapon and, by extension, a fiddler's bow. The Italian word descends from Latin arcus, meaning 'bow' or 'arch,' making it a cousin of English words such as 'arc,' 'arcade,' and 'archer.' It entered English musical vocabulary through the long-standing Italian tradition of musical terminology, which gave Western music most of its standard performance directions.
How arco is actually used
Arco appears almost exclusively in written music and among musicians; it is a technical term rather than everyday vocabulary. It is conventionally treated as an adverbial musical direction even though it derives from the Italian noun for bow.
Easily confused with arco
Pizzicato directs the player to pluck the strings with the fingers, whereas arco directs them to use the bow.