Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Simple past tense and past participle of attain.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective achieved or reached

Etymologies

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Examples

  • His Scotch estates were confiscated, and his title attained ” the attainder of the earldom was not reversed until 1824.

    Lady Mary Wortley Montague Melville, Lewis 1925

  • The lowest temperature that can theoretically be attained is equal to minus 273.15 degrees centigrade.

    March 2007 2007

  • The coins attained a considerable circulation before the trick was discovered, and then they were suppressed.

    The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 Devoted To Literature And National Policy Various

  • Webster gives several definitions of Gall; but the good old etymologist was gathered to his fathers long before the word attained its full development and assumed an honored place in the slang vernacular of the day.

    The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast, Volume 12 1919

  • The result attained is the conviction that no blue is really inconspicuous, and that some of the harsh new slaty tints are no less striking than the deeper shades they have superseded.

    Fighting France 1915

  • The real object to be attained is to explain and give a practical bearing on the facts, of the language of the section.

    The Alexandra 1863

  • How that goal is attained, that is, how to reach the readers, is in this perspective of secondary importance.

    Boing Boing 2009

  • But it should also take a step back and reassess the terrain, in particular the fact that for some women the word has attained negative associations.

    Why there's no reason to fear feminism | Jonathan Glennie 2011

  • Winckelmann, while sharing the Renaissance reverence for Greek art as the most sublime aesthetic expression attained by man and hence a part of the common heritage of man, never - theless recognized that the art of the Greeks was inimitable because it was interwoven with a total cul - ture which occupied a unique point in history and was incapable of being recreated.

    HISTORICISM GEORG G. IGGERS 1968

  • By this cycle the advantages of compression are gained and one step nearer to the steam engine is attained, that is, an impulse is given for every revolution of the engine.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 Various

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