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; arrive, -ist

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