Other forms: darts, darting
To dart is to move fast and suddenly in one direction, then stop. A mouse darts under the fridge; a child darts out between two parked cars; a wren darts along the hedge and is gone.
Eyes dart too - his eyes darted round the room - and that is the commonest figurative use. As a noun, a dart is the small pointed thing you throw at a numbered board, and darts, with the s, is the pub game itself, taking a singular verb: darts is on the television. A vet fires a tranquilliser dart into an animal from a distance. In sewing, a dart is a narrow wedge of cloth folded and stitched so that a flat piece of fabric fits a body that is not flat. You can also make a dart for the door, which is one quick movement and nothing to do with needles or boards.
1verbdartTo move suddenly and quickly in one direction.~2%
“A squirrel darted across the lawn and up the apple tree.”
2verbeyesTo move quickly from one thing to another, said of eyes or a glance.~2%
“Her eyes darted between the two of them, waiting for someone to speak.”
3nounsmallA small pointed missile thrown at a board or fired to drug an animal.~67%
“The last dart landed in the wire and bounced straight out.”
4nounpubThe pub game of throwing darts at a numbered board.~27%
“They play darts in the back room every Thursday.”
5nountaperedA tapered fold stitched into cloth to shape it to the body.~2%
“She put two darts at the waist so the dress would hang properly.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 9 sentences found in the wild and placed 7 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Dart came through Middle English and Old French dart from Medieval Latin dardus, which the Romance languages had taken from Frankish *darothu, a spear. Behind that stand Proto-Germanic *darothuz and the Proto-Indo-European root *dherh3-, to leap or spring. The weapon came first and the verb copied it: to dart is to travel the way a thrown spear travels.
Middle English
dart
English, today
dart
Built from
From Middle English dart. From Middle English dart, from Old French dart, dard (“dart”), from Medieval Latin dardus, from Frankish darōþu (“dart, spear”), from Proto-Germanic darōþuz (“dart, spear”), from Proto-Indo-European dʰerh₃- (“to leap, spring”). Compare Old High German tart (“javelin, dart”), Old English daroþ, dearod (“javelin, spear, dart”), Swedish dart (“dart, dagger”), Icelandic darraður, darr, dör (“dart, spear”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA