·

13 “Arrive to” vs. “arrive in” vs. “arrive at” in English

Because of the influence of verbs like “come to,” “move to,” and “go to,” learners of English often tend to use the combination “arrive” + “to.” However, although sentences such as “come to me,” “we moved to London,” and “are you going to the party?” are completely appropriate, “arrive” behaves somewhat differently.

There is only one context in which “arrive to” is appropriate, namely when “to” means “in order to”; for example:

The cleaner arrived (in order) to clean the office.

When you want to express that you come to a country, city, or generally a geographical location, use arrive in, for example:

We will arrive in England at about 5 o'clock.
We will arrive to England at about 5 o'clock.
Call me when you arrive in Paris.
Call me when you arrive to Paris.

In virtually any other situation, you should use arrive at:

When I arrived at the party, all my friends were already drunk.
When I arrived to the party, all my friends were already drunk.
Will you arrive at the meeting?
Will you arrive to the meeting?

There are a few isolated expressions in which arrived on is possible (but there's nothing wrong with “arrive at” either):

We arrived on/at the island after a long trip.
The spacecraft arrived on/at Mars.
The police arrived too late on/at the scene of crime.

Summary

A few more examples of correct usage:

...
This is not all! Sign up to see the rest of this text and become part of our community of language learners.
...

The rest of this article is available only to logged-in users. By signing up, you'll gain access to a vast library of content.

Continue reading
Most common grammar mistakes
Comments
Jakub 21d
Did you arrive at the comment section? 😉