arriviste

Mr. McInerney had his turn as a celebrated literary arriviste.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 17, 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

That was the story we told ourselves as Chelsea went from usurper to establishment, the club that initially inspired the idea of cracking down on arriviste wealth suddenly recast as one of its foremost advocates.

From New York Times ● Mar. 11, 2022

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

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

Neither are they pure expressions of self-made grandeur in the style of today’s proud arrivistes who flag their wealth on social media as a capitalist boast.

From Washington Post ● Feb. 11, 2023

George and Ruth are the sophisticated, wealthy ones; Clay and Amanda are the middle-class arrivistes.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 2, 2020

Now, many of them are considered household names, even mandarins of a sort—Gabriel García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, José Donoso, Julio Cortázar—but first they were gritty arrivistes, young and unknown.

From The New Yorker ● Sep. 28, 2015

Over the years, charming upstarts, curious arrivistes, and dogged usurpers joined the original collegiate cocktails, which themselves evolved and degenerated to varying degrees.

From Slate ● Sep. 16, 2013

They resemble the arrivistes of the Gilded Age, which began in the 1880s when industrial capitalists amassed staggering fortunes, except that there are so many of them and they seem to be relatively anonymous.

From "Class Matters" by The New York Times