arriviste

American  

[ar-ee-veest, a-ree-veest] / ˌær iˈvist, a riˈvist /

noun

plural

arrivistes

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

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arriviste British  

/ ˌæriːˈviːst, arivist /

noun

1. a person who is unscrupulously ambitious

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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."

Example Sentences

Four years later, he had enough arriviste chutzpah to run for state governor as the candidate for the Liberty Union Party—a leftist Vermont grouping.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 29, 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

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

The main thing Undine has going for her is that she’s gorgeous—her looks “as vivid, and almost as crude” as the electric lights that blaze in her arriviste hotel room.

From The New Yorker • Sep. 9, 2019

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