Armed means carrying weapons. An armed man, armed police, armed and dangerous.
British police are mostly unarmed, which is unusual and deliberate, and armed officers are a specialist minority. Armed with also works figuratively — armed with the facts. The armed forces is the standard collective term for a country's military.
1adjectivearmedCarrying weapons.
“Armed police surrounded the building where the gunman was hiding.”
armed is a state of carrying weapons.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂er-
Middle English
arm
English
arm
English, today
armed
Built from
From arm + -ed. arm comes from Middle English arm. From Middle English arm, from Old English earm (Anglian arm), from Proto-West Germanic arm, from Proto-Germanic armaz (“arm”), from Proto-Indo-European h₂r̥mós (“a fitting, joint; arm, forequarter”), a suffixed form of h₂er- (“to join, fit together”). 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA