Language tip of the week: arrive

In this weekly post, we bring more useful content from the Macmillan Dictionary to English language learners. These tips are usually based on areas of English which learners find difficult, e.g. spelling, grammar, collocation, synonyms, etc.

This week’s language tip helps with the verb arrive:

The verb arrive is never used with the preposition to:
✗ He meets them at an inn before they ~~arrive to~~ the house.
✓ He meets them at an inn before they arrive at the house.

Arrive can be used with at or in:

▪ you arrive at a building (such as an airport or restaurant)
…the scene in which Robyn arrives at the factory for the first time

▪ you arrive in a geographical location (such as a city or country)
A delegation of senior French ministers will arrive in London today.

▪ you can also use arrive at in a figurative way, meaning ‘to reach a particular goal or point in a process’
Quite independently, we all arrived at the same conclusion.
The court will arrive at a final decision next week.

Note that with the word home, no preposition is used:
✗ When they finally ~~arrive at home~~, all they want to do is sleep.
✓ When they finally arrive home, all they want to do is sleep.