Attained vs Attainted - What's the difference?

As verbs the difference between attained and attainted

is that attained is past tense of attain while attainted is past tense of attaint.

subject to attainder; condemned to death or outlawry, hence stripped of one's titles, hereditary rights, or possessions.

(head)

(attain)

(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)

(head)

(attaint)

(en adjective)

Subject to attainder; condemned to death or outlawry, hence stripped of one's titles, hereditary rights, or possessions.

* 2000 , (George RR Martin), A Storm of Swords , Bantam 2011, p. 383:

The king stands in your father's place, since your brother is an attainted traitor.

*2011 , Thomas Penn, Winter King , Penguin 2012, p. 228:

*:Besides, Suffolk, attainted – stripped of his hereditary title – was no longer a member of the nobility, merely ‘Ed. Rebel’.

Tainted, corrupted.