Definition of Arete

"The root of the word is the same as 'aristos', the word which shows superlative ability and superiority, and 'aristos' was constantly used in the plural to denote the nobility." (see Aristocracy) The Ancient Greeks applied the term to anything: for example, the excellence of a chimney, the excellence of a bull to be bred, and the excellence of a man. The meaning of the word changes depending on what it describes, since everything has its own particular excellence; the arete of a man is different from the arete of a horse. This way of thinking first comes from Plato, and can be seen in Plato's Allegory of the Cave..

The magazine has published contributions by a wide range of authors, including Ian McEwan, Patrick Marber, Tom Stoppard, and Julian Barnes. It has also promoted new authors such as Adam Thirlwell, Jeremy Noel-Tod, James Womack and Tom Welsford.

One of the publication's defining features is "Our Bold", in which the editorial team takes sloppy critics to task. The magazine prides itself on high editorial standards and on close and accurate reading where others appear to have read superficially. Unashamedly nostalgic for the informed critical discourse of magazines such as the Paris Review, it is strongly associated with New College, Oxford.

This article is about a glacial landform. See Arete for other meanings.

An arête is a thin, almost knife-like, ridge of rock which is typically formed when two glaciers erode parallel U-shaped valleys. The arête is a thin ridge of rock that is left separating the two valleys. Arêtes can also form when two glacial cirques erode headwards towards one another, although frequently this results in a saddle-shaped pass, called a col. The edge is then sharpened by freeze-thaw weathering. The word "arête" is actually French for fishbone; similar features in the Alps are described with the German equivalent term Grat or Kamm (comb).