arriviste
Americannoun
-
arrivistes
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of arriviste
From French, dating back to 1900–05; see origin at arrive, -ist
Explanation
An arriviste is someone who's moved up in the world quickly and ends up being resented. You might visit your hometown and feel like it's full of arrivistes who can pay exorbitant prices for enormous houses. When someone suddenly earns a whole lot more money than they did before, they find themselves in a new economic class. If the people who have belonged to this group for a long time (maybe they inherited their wealth from their grandparents, for example) are resentful of this person and their "new money," they might use the word arriviste. An arriviste is newly arrived in this world — as you can see in the French root, arriver, "to arrive."
Vocabulary lists containing arriviste
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Like with his media empire, Turner began his sailing career as a noisy arriviste, and finished as a champ.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 7, 2026
Her circle includes an aunt who is a champion wrestler, a resident Goth named Isabel and sultry Penny Century, an arriviste married to a wealthy magnate with horns on his head.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 3, 2023
That was the story we told ourselves as Chelsea went from usurper to establishment, the club that initially inspired the idea of cracking down on arriviste wealth suddenly recast as one of its foremost advocates.
From New York Times ● Mar. 11, 2022
Similarly, in Our Mutual Friend there’s lacerating satire of the nouveau-riche Veneerings and their aristocratic and arriviste hangers-on.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 23, 2020
Bobby, in contrast, was nervous and volatile, the chess arriviste of Brooklyn, a colt of a player, and as it was beginning to develop, the spearhead of the coming generation of American players.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
Welcome to the second season of HBO’s opulent drama “The Gilded Age,” a series laden with emblematic showdowns between the gaudy arrivistes and the idle drawing-room class.
From New York Times ● Nov. 8, 2023
Neither are they pure expressions of self-made grandeur in the style of today’s proud arrivistes who flag their wealth on social media as a capitalist boast.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 11, 2023
George and Ruth are the sophisticated, wealthy ones; Clay and Amanda are the middle-class arrivistes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 2, 2020
The article, which describes old-fashioned Wasps feuding with glamorous arrivistes, is a safari of rich people behaving badly.
From The New Yorker ● Jul. 16, 2019
Masters of power politics, engineers of genius, the Mexica were also upstarts and pretenders, arrivistes who falsely claimed a brilliant line of descent.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
