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a coming into place, view, or being; arrival:
the advent of the holiday season.
(usually initial capital letter) the coming of Christ into the world.
(initial capital letter) the period beginning four Sundays before Christmas, observed in commemoration of the coming of Christ into the world.
(usually initial capital letter) .
the coming of Christ on Judgment Day.
Contemporary Examples

The book offers a tour of the hundred years of the company, from the advent of the Model T to the sleek Taurus.
The Daily Beast Recommends The Daily Beast June 15, 2009

Thanks to the digitization of entertainment goods and the advent of 3-D printing, a host of new applications are possible.
Font of Invention September 17, 2014

With the advent of forces like the digital age and climate change, fashion is charting previously unforeseen territory.
Tomas Maier on The Road Ahead Daily Beast Promotions May 12, 2009

Environmentalists have responded warily to the advent of gas.
Let’s Tax Carbon David Frum December 2, 2012

The Iron Curtain and the advent of the Cold War was one such effect.
The Case Against Isolation Michael Tomasky September 12, 2013

Historical Examples

Otherwise, there was little chance of many bids for the place, but his advent changed the outlook.
Ditte: Girl Alive! Martin Andersen Nexo

The visitor’s advent was announced again by the brass knocker on the front door.
Thoroughbreds W. A. Fraser

With the advent of better times it is often very difficult to enrol them once again in the ranks of industry.
Crime and Its Causes William Douglas Morrison

He had so long and so passionately looked for the advent of that moment!
The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete Emile Zola

He found himself regarding the advent of Doctor Sarson as possessing some secondary significance.
The Vanished Messenger E. Phillips Oppenheim

noun
an arrival or coming, esp one which is awaited
noun
(Christianity) the season including the four Sundays preceding Christmas or (in Eastern Orthodox churches) the forty days preceding Christmas
noun
the prophesied return of Christ to earth at the Last Judgment
n.

“important arrival,” 1742, an extended sense of Advent “season before Christmas” (Old English), from Latin adventus “a coming, approach, arrival,” in Church Latin “the coming of the Savior,” from past participle stem of advenire “arrive, come to,” from ad- “to” (see ad-) + venire “to come” (see venue). In English, also sometimes extended to the Pentecost.

The coming of Jesus, either in the Incarnation of biblical times or in the Second Coming at the end of the world. Also, a time observed in many Christian churches in December to prepare for Christmas.

The return of Jesus, prophesied in the New Testament, to judge the living and the dead and bring about the final triumph of good over evil. The writings of the Apostles in the New Testament express the belief that the Second Coming will happen soon and suggest that it may happen within a generation of their own time. (See Judgment Day.)

Note: Several Christian denominations, such as the Seventh-Day Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, are founded on a similar belief about the imminence of Jesus’ return.

games
/ad’vent/ The prototypical computer adventure game, first implemented by Will Crowther for a CDC computer (probably the CDC 6600?) as an attempt at computer-refereed fantasy gaming.
ADVENT was ported to the PDP-10, and expanded to the 350-point Classic puzzle-oriented version, by Don Woods of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL). The game is now better known as Adventure, but the TOPS-10 operating system permitted only six-letter filenames. All the versions since are based on the SAIL port.
David Long of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business Computing Facility (which had two of the four DEC20s on campus in the late 1970s and early 1980s) was responsible for expanding the cave in a number of ways, and pushing the point count up to 500, then 501 points. Most of his work was in the data files, but he made some changes to the parser as well.
This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style now expected in text adventure games, and popularised several tag lines that have become fixtures of hacker-speak: “A huge green fierce snake bars the way!” “I see no X here” (for some noun X). “You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.” “You are in a little maze of twisty passages, all different.” The “magic words” xyzzy and plugh also derive from this game.
Crowther, by the way, participated in the exploration of the Mammoth & Flint Ridge cave system; it actually *has* a “Colossal Cave” and a “Bedquilt” as in the game, and the “Y2” that also turns up is cavers’ jargon for a map reference to a secondary entrance.
See also vadding.
[Was the original written in Fortran?]
[Jargon File]
(1996-04-01)