Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The coming or arrival of something or someone that is important or worthy of note.
  • noun The liturgical period preceding Christmas, beginning in Western churches on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and in Eastern churches in mid-November, and observed by many Christians as a season of prayer, fasting, and penitence.
  • noun The coming of Jesus at the Incarnation.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A coming into place, view, or being; visitation; arrival; accession: as, the advent of visitors, of an infant, or of death.
  • noun Specifically The coming of Christ as the Saviour of the world. Hence [capitalized] Eccles., the period immediately preceding the festival of the Nativity.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Eccl.) The period including the four Sundays before Christmas.
  • noun (Eccl.) the first Sunday in the season of Advent, being always the nearest Sunday to the feast of St. Andrew (Now. 30).
  • noun The first or the expected second coming of Christ.
  • noun Coming; any important arrival; approach.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Coming; coming to; approach; arrival.
  • noun religion, Christianity See Advent.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the season including the four Sundays preceding Christmas
  • noun arrival that has been awaited (especially of something momentous)
  • noun (Christian theology) the reappearance of Jesus as judge for the Last Judgment

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, the Advent season, from Old French, from Latin adventus, arrival, from past participle of advenīre, to come to : ad-, ad- + venīre, to come; see gwā- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin adventus ("coming to"), perfect passive participle form of verb advenire ("come to"), from prefix ad- ("to"), + verb venire ("come"). Cognate to French avenir ("future").

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Examples

Comments

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  • The arrival of the television surprised many people.

    March 30, 2007

  • WIZARD

    Times being what they were, I accepted the

    job, -- retaining my balloon against the

    advent of a quick get-away.

    (laughs)

    And in that balloon, my dear Dorothy, you

    and I will return to the land of E Pluribus

    Unum!

    June 7, 2010