Arrestate

Arrestate is a term with no widely accepted definition in standard English. It may appear as a nonce word in various discussions or as a historical or dialect spelling related to arrest, but it is not part of mainstream vocabulary with a fixed meaning.

In historical usage, arrestate has occasionally appeared as a variant spelling of arrest, referring to the act of detaining or seizing someone under lawful authority. This sense is archaic or dialectal and not common in modern legal or linguistic work.

In contemporary, specialized writing, arrestate is sometimes proposed as a neologism or technical coinage. In such contexts, it is used to describe a process that halts a system or process and then returns it to a known or stable state. This suggested meaning blends ideas from arrest (to stop) with state restoration, but it is informal and not standardized. Because of its lack of a clear, widely accepted definition, readers should treat arrestate as a term that requires explicit definition when used.

When incorporating arrestate into writing, authors are advised to define the term on first use and to minimize reliance on it unless they are prepared to provide a precise sense. In most formal contexts, established terms such as arrest, reset, restate, or restabilize are clearer alternatives.

See also: arrest, restate, restatement, reset.