Unified Modeling Language Reference Manual, The, Second Edition

receive

To handle a message instance passed from a sender object.

See receiver, sender, substitution.

Semantics

The reception of a message by an object is an event. If the message represents a call, it is a call event; if the message represents a signal send, it is a signal event. If an operation (in the case of a call) or a reception (in the case of a signal) is declared by the classifier of the owning object, the receipt of the message by an object may resolve to an effect, such as the execution of a procedure or the triggering of a transition. (The declaration of the reception may be implicit if the reception resolves to a trigger.)

Instead of declaring an effect for a given kind of reception, an object may execute an accept action, in which ...