Arrival

How to spell arrival

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce arrival

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does arrival mean?

1. nounThe act of reaching a destination, or the moment when someone or something gets there.

Arrival in a sentence

• The arrival of the morning train was delayed by an hour.

• Guests were greeted with coffee on their arrival at the hotel.

Where does arrival come from?

Language of origin: French

Arrival traces back to the verb arrive, which English took from the Old French ariver in the 1200s. That French verb grew out of the Vulgar Latin phrase arripare, formed from the Latin ad ripam, meaning literally 'to the shore'. The original picture was very physical: a boat coming to land and touching the riverbank or coast, since ripa meant 'shore' or 'riverbank'. Over time the sense broadened from reaching the shore to reaching any destination by any means, and the noun arrival, marking the act or moment of getting there, settled into English by the 1300s. The same ripa root still hides inside the word 'riparian', used today for anything relating to the bank of a river, and remembering that watery origin helps fix the single r before the doubled r and the plain -val ending.

How the word is built

• arrive (from Latin ad ripam: to the shore)
• -al (noun suffix meaning the act of)