Arrive Home or Arrive at Home? Which is correct? – One Minute English

Using either ‘arrive home’ or ‘arrive at home’ is grammatically correct. This is because the word ‘at’ is a preposition. However, ‘arrive home’ is used most frequently throughout the English language in both written and spoken form. 

Continue reading on to learn more about this common phrase, the definition of the words, and examples of how and when to use each.

Arrive Home

The phrase ‘arrive home’ means to come to the end of your journey at home. In the instance of this particular phrase, the speaker or writer is commonly referring to their own home or a place that feels like a home to them, personally.

You can use the phrase in various types of sentence structures such as both questions or statements. Here are a few examples of using the phrase ‘arrive home’ in sentences:

• My flight was delayed so I will arrive home much later than anticipated.
• What time will you arrive home?
• We will arrive home this evening after work.

Arrive at Home

Though not as commonly used in either the written or spoken language, the phrase ‘arrive at home’ is also grammatically correct. The word ‘at’ is a preposition and as such much precedes either a common or proper noun. In most cases, you will hear another word, likely a pronoun, inserted into the phrase. Such examples of this are:

• Have you arrived at my home yet?
• We are going to John’s after work, what time will you arrive at his home?
• The traffic made it take so much longer to arrive at my home than usual.

Each of these examples includes an extra pronoun before the noun. Though it is not needed, it is still the correct form of usage.

Which Phrase to Use and When

If you are writing or speaking and are unsure of which phrase to use in your sentence structure, you can always lean toward the safer option. This would be simply writing or saying ‘arrive home’. Native speakers of the English language will understand it, and written papers will still be grammatically correct.

If you are referring to the home of someone or something else, other than your personal residence, you would want to include the word ‘at’ in your speaking or writing. This also includes non-human homes as well, such as wolf dens, beehives, and other animal homes.

Read more about go home here.