arriviste

[ ar-ee-veest; French a-ree-veest ]

noun

, plural ar·ri·vistes [ar-ee-, veests, a, -, r, ee-, veest].

1. a person who has recently acquired unaccustomed status, wealth, or success, especially by dubious means and without earning concomitant esteem.

arriviste

/ ˌæriːˈviːst; arivist /

noun

1. a person who is unscrupulously ambitious

Word History and Origins

Origin of arriviste¹

From French, dating back to 1900–05; arrive, -ist

Word History and Origins

Origin of arriviste¹

French: see arrive , -ist

Example Sentences

Times’ Orange County bureau employed hundreds, with us as the foul-mouthed arriviste.

From Los Angeles Times

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

Zeynep Bozbay is warm and convincing as Marianne Effinger, who rejects her arriviste family’s lavish lifestyle by devoting herself to charity.

From New York Times

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 Literature

And in “Whitelisted,” Chisa Hutchinson turns a Black ghost loose on the brownstone of a gentrifying White arriviste.

From Washington Post