Attain vs Achieve - What's the difference?
attain | achieve |
To accomplish; to achieve.
To get at the knowledge of; to ascertain.
* Fuller
To reach or come to, by progression or motion; to arrive at.
* Milton
* Bible, Psalms cxxxix. 6
To come or arrive, by motion, growth, bodily exertion, or efforts toward a place, object, state, etc.; to reach.
* Bible, Acts xxvii. 12
* Sir Walter Scott
* Cowper
* J. R. Green
To reach in excellence or degree; to equal.
(obsolete) To overtake.
To succeed in something, now especially in academic performance.
To carry out successfully; to accomplish.
* I. Taylor
(obsolete) To conclude, finish, especially successfully.
* 1590 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queene) , III.1:
To obtain, or gain (a desired result, objective etc.), as the result of exertion; to succeed in gaining; to win.
*
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, title= * (William Shakespeare), (Twelfth Night), II-v
*
(obsolete) To conclude, to turn out.
* Prior
* (William Shakespeare), (Othello), II-i
In transitive terms the difference between attain and achieve
is that attain is to reach or come to, by progression or motion; to arrive at while achieve is to obtain, or gain (a desired result, objective etc.), as the result of exertion; to succeed in gaining; to win.In intransitive terms the difference between attain and achieve
is that attain is to come or arrive, by motion, growth, bodily exertion, or efforts toward a place, object, state, etc.; to reach while achieve is to succeed in something, now especially in academic performance.attain
English
Verb
(en verb)- To attain such a high level of proficiency requires hours of practice each day.
- not well attaining his meaning
- Canaan he now attains .
- Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I can not attain unto it.
- if by any means they might attain to Phenice
- Nor nearer might the dogs attain .
- to see your trees attain to the dignity of timber
- Few boroughs had as yet attained to power such as this.
- (Francis Bacon)
achieve
English
Alternative forms
* (l) (obsolete )Verb
(achiev)- Supposing faculties and powers to be the same, far more may be achieved in any line by the aid of a capital, invigorating motive than without it.
- Full many Countreyes they did overronne, / From the uprising to the setting Sunne, / And many hard adventures did atchieve [...].
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- Some are born great, some achieve greatness.
- Thou hast achieved our liberty.
- Show all the spoils by valiant kings achieved .
- He hath achieved a maid / That paragons description.