arrowleaf is a compound of the native English arrow (from Old English arwe) and leaf (from Old English leaf), naming plants with arrow-shaped foliage. Morphologically, the word is transparent as a compound: its parts remain visible in the modern spelling, while the older history of those parts supplies the deeper ancestry. In modern use, the noun sense is "any of various plants having arrow-shaped leaves", which keeps the etymology connected to the word's present dictionary value rather than treating it as a merely historical label. The wider word family includes related English forms such as arrow, leaf, showing how the same base continues to support neighboring English vocabulary. The principal historical forms in the chain include Old English arwe, Old English leaf, which anchor the explanation in named linguistic material.