Other forms: arrivals
An arrival is the moment you reach the place you were going to. The train pulls in, the plane touches down, the taxi stops outside the door.
It is the noun of arrive, and it takes OF: the arrival of the guests, the arrival of spring. On arrival is the fixed phrase you meet in instructions, as in hand your passport in on arrival. An arrival is also the person or thing that has just come, so a new arrival is a baby in a family or a new face at work, and the airport board says Arrivals over one hall and Departures over the other. The word marks beginnings too: the arrival of cheap flights emptied the coach station. Its opposite is departure.
1nounarrivalThe act or moment of reaching a place.~80%
“Their arrival was two hours late and nobody had eaten.”
2nounnounA person or thing that has just come.~4%
“The newest arrival in the office still cannot work the coffee machine.”
3nounbeginningThe beginning of something new.~16%
“The arrival of the internet changed how the shop took its orders.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 25 sentences found in the wild and placed 25 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
arrival is a moment of reaching a place.
Arrival is arrive with a noun ending, taken from Middle French arrivaille. Middle English spelled it half a dozen ways before printers settled on one: arivaile, arivaille, arryvaile, aryvayle. The modern spelling is the last survivor of that pile.
Middle French
arrivaille
Middle English
arivaile
English, today
arrival
From Middle English arivaile, arivaille, arrival, arryvaile, arryvaylle, aryvayle, aryvaylle, from Middle French arrivaille, from arriver. by surface analysis, arrive + -al.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA