Arrive

//əˈɹaɪv// verb, slang

verb, slang ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To reach; to get to a certain place. copulative, intransitive

    "We've just arrived at the hotel to book in, so we should arrive at Mike’s in time for lunch."

  2. 2
    reach a destination; arrive by movement or progress wordnet
  3. 3
    To obtain a level of success or fame; to succeed. intransitive

    "He had finally arrived on Broadway."

  4. 4
    succeed in a big way; get to the top wordnet
  5. 5
    To come; said of time. intransitive

    "The time has arrived for us to depart."

Show 4 more definitions
  1. 6
    To happen or occur. intransitive

    "Happy! to whom this glorious death arrives."

  2. 7
    To achieve orgasm; to cum; to ejaculate. Ireland, UK, intransitive, often, slang, vulgar
  3. 8
    To reach; to come to. archaic, transitive

    "Ere he arrive the happy isle."

  4. 9
    To bring to shore. intransitive, obsolete

    "and made the sea-trod ship arrive them"

Synonyms

All synonyms
attaincomeget toaccomplishachieveachieve success

Example

More examples

"The train from Geneva will arrive at the station."

Etymology

From Middle English arriven, ariven, from Old French ariver, from Early Medieval Latin adrīpāre (“to land, come ashore”), derived from Latin rīpa (“shore, river-bank”). Displaced native oncome, tocome. For the semantic evolution, compare Old English ġelandian, ġelendan, lendan (“to arrive at land; land”) > Middle English alenden, landen (“to arrive; arrive at shore; land”).

Related phrases

arrive atit is better to travel hopefully than to arriveairplane timeairport areacame nowcome incoming homecoming incoming somewherecoming toget hereget there

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.