to arrive at
- phrasal verb
- /əˈraɪv æt/
- The train is scheduled to arrive at the station by 6 PM.
- arrive at a destination
- arrive at a conclusion
- arrive at a decision
And so those kids arrive at Stanford prepared.
- And so those kids arrive at Stanford prepared.
- And how does Epicurus arrive at this sort of perspective?
- Each morning the holy ones arrive at sunrise with blessing songs.
- And you, perhaps you spent your whole life trying to arrive at some point.
- It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.
- What is your process of arriving at the truth?
- OK, so we have arrived at Desperate Deals clothing store.
- When those waves arrive at the source, the source randomly picks one.
- Why would Hegel arrive at this this this point?
- That's where our society has to arrive at in abortion.
- So it looks like we've arrived at an absolute subject.
- How long did it take you to arrive at this point, to this point?
- And you have seen Gavin Newsom arrive at the table ceding ground.
Examples
-
Late in the afternoon of June 4, 1944, they arrived at the station in Richmond.
Academic text (1990) -
After what seemed like an eternity, the ambulance finally arrived at the remote beach.
Academic text (2011) -
And, you know, we arrived at the port my third day in Africa.
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Without paying too much attention to the road, I had arrived at the station.
Fiction book (1990) -
How long did it take you to arrive at this point, to this point?
-
How did you arrive at this particular book?
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How did you arrive at this conclusion?
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We have just arrived at Westfields in London.
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Exhausted and footweary, they arrived at the cabin.
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- On further reflection, I think that you'll arrive at the same diagnosis I did.
Synonyms
Reach a goal, place, or state after effort
Get to a place, level, or goal after effort
Reach a decision or understanding
To decide something after looking at the facts
To reach a level, place, or goal after hard work
To make a final decision after thinking
Move on to a higher level after getting better
Surface Forms
Morphology
arrive + at
The meaning 'to reach a particular place or conclusion' is directly and compositionally derived from 'arrive' (to reach a destination) combined with the locative preposition 'at' indicating the target point. This verb + preposition construction is a common, cross-linguistic pattern and would be readily understood by a B1 learner who knows both constituents.
Etymology
Arrive at comes from the image of travel: you arrive at a station or house when you reach it. That same image works for ideas or decisions, so to arrive at an idea or agreement means 'to reach' it after thinking.