Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To succeed in gaining possession of as the result of planning or endeavor; acquire.
- v. To be established, accepted, or customary: "standards, proprieties that no longer obtain” ( Meg Greenfield).
- v. Archaic To succeed.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To get; procure; secure; acquire; gain: as, to obtain a month's leave of absence; to obtain riches.
- To attain; reach; arrive at.
- To attain or reach by endeavor; succeed in (reaching, receiving, or doing something); manage.
- Hence To achieve; win.
- To hold; keep; maintain possession of.
- Synonyms Attain, Obtain, Procure. See attain.
- To secure what one desires or strives for; prevail; succeed.
- To be common or customary; prevail or be established in practice; be in vogue; hold good; subsist; prevail: as, the custom still obtains in some country districts.
- To attain; come.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. obsolete To hold; to keep; to possess.
- v. To get hold of by effort; to gain possession of; to procure; to acquire, in any way.
- v. To gain or have a firm footing; to be recognized or established; to become prevalent or general; to prevail.
- v. archaic and Rare To prevail; to succeed.
WordNet 3.0
- v. receive a specified treatment (abstract)
- v. be valid, applicable, or true
- v. come into possession of
Etymologies
- From Anglo-Norman obtenir, optiner et al., and Middle French obtenir, from Latin obtinēre ("to gain, achieve, succeed, possess"), from ob- + tenēre ("to hold"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English obteinen, from Old French obtenir, from Latin obtinēre : ob-, intensive pref.; see ob- + tenēre, to hold; see ten- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“And the very things which the Jews speak of the Hebrew word obtain also in the Greek.”
“Recently, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (ABCNY) posted an Ethics Opinion commenting on the developing issue of what lawyers may properly obtain from the Internet concerning clients or adversaries.”
The Huffington Post: Bill Singer: Danger: Legal Sharks Circle Online Posters
“He seems not to accept "authority" in any terms other than those that might obtain from a guarantee of preservation from all error by the Spirit.”
Fr. Robert Barron on Protestantism, authority, and Cardinal Newman
“The central & north European pies I tasted were on par with what one might obtain from a day old Chuck-E-Cheese slice, after it has been carefully aged on the floor of a truck stop bathroom in Gaffney, SC.”
“But also, as previously mentioned, what most people really obtain is not so much insurance (characterized by infrequent events and high payouts) but rather a product called insurance that really functions as insulation or consumption smoothing (characterized by frequent events and low pay outs).”
“Many figures were obtain from the Norton Online Living Report by Symantec.”
“They will not obtain from the book a sound knowledge of the basics of the subjects under discussion, nor will they be in a position to judge the relative credibility of conventional ideas and Penrose's alternatives.”
“Nick are you an idiot or a college student with a life that daddy pays for? if you add FL and MI the number to obtain is 2210 not 2026.”
“Her charity for her neighbor made her grieve bitterly that there should be so many sinful men in danger of eternal death; and by constant prayer, together with voluntary sufferings, she strove to obtain from the divine mercy that they might return to the path of salvation, with the help of divine grace.”
“There is an Official Guide to Driving a Car In Mexico published by the Sectretaria of Turismo that you can obtain from the Mexican Government Tourism Office in all major cities in the US and Canada.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘obtain’.
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EN - academic vocabulary
Use these and get promoted
abandon, abandonment, abnormally, abstract, abstraction, abstractly, abstracts, academia, academic, academically, academics, academies and 3119 more...
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IMCO - EU nomenclature
includes words of the "Prodcom list"
abaca, abdominal, abrasive, absorbent, absorber, accelerator, accessory, account book, accumulator, acebutolol, acetaldehyde, acetamide and 4515 more...
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EU Buzz - Lisbon Treaty
All words of the Lisbon Treaty
(Persons' names, foreign and grammatical words have been eliminated, MWEs have been split up into individual words. Capitalization has been retained if r...conferral, stateless, person, voting, right, subsidiarity, Latvia, Malta, Slovenia, Lithuania, Finland, Estonia and 2614 more...
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ob-
to; toward; before; opposed to; against; upon; over
Note: can change formobsequious, object, obnoxiousobfuscate, obnoxious, objurgate, omission, occur, offer, oppose, opposition, obtuse, obstruct and 11 more...
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the first list
an immense, grandiloquent list that loads like a thousand years sentence in stone. new words are in the other lists.
ridiculous, brummagem, predicament, sanctimonious, vapid, eschew, admonish, auspicious, capitulation, enumerate, lachrymose, tenet and 1648 more...
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Words
My list of words.
veritable, facetious, nadir, quixotic, apropos, acquiesce, ostensible, insipid, egregious, inveterate, coax, adroit and 409 more...
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Basic English Vocabulary
Very basic words for ESL students.
contemplate, container, consumer, consultant, consensus, conscious, conscience, connection, confusion, confront, conflict, confident and 4334 more...
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GRE list 1
Bloviate, Bacchanalia, mirth, covet, inconsequential, prescient, heresy, revelry, modality, gentrify, vitiate, tantalize and 182 more...
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A spoonful of sugar
Words I should learn/I want to learn/I just learned, with a quotation to help the medicine go down.
approbation, assuage, chicanery, abscond, effrontery, enervation, equivocate, ennui, aftertaste, filibuster, perfunctory, abide and 391 more...
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my dictionary
able, abnormally, abroad, absent, abstract, acceptable, acceptance, access, accessible, accession, according to, account and 4551 more...
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Words of the Day
glabella, chirotony, nook-shotten, crapehanger, filemot, swirlie, egosurf, lexiphanicism, Ruritanian, stichometry, chrononaut, faldstool and 2031 more...
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Words of weirdness
Weird words that are weird
fjord, rape, carnage, bubbles, wizz, screamery, dominion, panophobia, poopie, gremlin, fuzz, obtain and 103 more...
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A Scanner Darkly (2006)
Words from a 2006 'A Scanner Darkly' film.
aphid, scramble, purport, toll, lurch, cold turkey, pharmacopoeia, vasoconstriction, inordinate, front money, meth, providence and 67 more...
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to essay
good verbs for essays
incorporate, paint, project, present, utilize, enable, impact, influence, itemize, deduce, specify, list and 51 more...
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myriasofo's list
words that I find especially useful in text and dialogue
kindle, hang, waive, specific, drastic, swift, crush, devour, eidetic, flash, defer, submit and 31 more...
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Tainted Love
The -tain verbs. The fascinating thing with these is that we have most of the family in English yet not the daddy of them, which would be a verb derived from the Latin tenere 'to hold'. We have a c...
maintain, contain, pertain, ascertain, obtain, detain, abstain, retain, entertain, sustain
Tweets
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