Verb

(en verb)

To accomplish; to achieve.

To attain such a high level of proficiency requires hours of practice each day.

To get at the knowledge of; to ascertain.

* Fuller

not well attaining his meaning

To reach or come to, by progression or motion; to arrive at.

* Milton

Canaan he now attains .

* Bible, Psalms cxxxix. 6

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I can not attain unto it.

To come or arrive, by motion, growth, bodily exertion, or efforts toward a place, object, state, etc.; to reach.

* Bible, Acts xxvii. 12

if by any means they might attain to Phenice

* Sir Walter Scott

Nor nearer might the dogs attain .

* Cowper

to see your trees attain to the dignity of timber

* J. R. Green

Few boroughs had as yet attained to power such as this.

To reach in excellence or degree; to equal.

(obsolete) To overtake.

(Francis Bacon)

Verb

(en verb)

(lb) To hold inside.

*

At half-past nine on this Saturday evening, the parlour of the Salutation Inn, High Holborn, contained most of its customary visitors.In former days every tavern of repute kept such a room for its own select circle, a club, or society, of habitués, who met every evening, for a pipe and a cheerful glass.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Welcome to the plastisphere , passage=[The researchers] noticed many of their pieces of [plastic marine] debris sported surface pits around two microns across. Such pits are about the size of a bacterial cell. Closer examination showed that some of these pits did, indeed, contain bacteria,

(lb) To include as a part.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2014-04-21, volume=411, issue=8884, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Subtle effects , passage=Manganism has been known about since the 19th century, when miners exposed to ores containing manganese, a silvery metal, began to totter, slur their speech and behave like someone inebriated.}}

(lb) To put constraint upon; to restrain; to confine; to keep within bounds.

* (Edmund Spenser) (c.1552–1599)

The king's person contains the unruly people from evil occasions.

* (William Shakespeare) (1564-1616)

Fear not, my lord: we can contain ourselves.

*

Athelstan Arundel walked home all the way, foaming and raging. No omnibus, cab, or conveyance ever built could contain a young man in such a rage. His mother lived at Pembridge Square, which is four good measured miles from Lincoln's Inn.

To have as an element.

To restrain desire; to live in continence or chastity.

* Bible, vii. 9.

But if they can not contain , let them marry.