Definition of "attain" []

• To gain as an objective; achieve: attain a diploma by hard work. (verb-transitive)
• To arrive at, as by virtue of persistence or the passage of time. See Synonyms at reach. (verb-transitive)
• To succeed in a directed effort, process, or progression: attained to high office; eventually attained to wisdom. (verb-intransitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "And just the fact that you used the word attain instead of obtain, tells me you think the latter is fine."
• "We may never again attain the stature this president and his criminal cohorts have so brutally wasted in their headlong grab for oil money and power."
• "Sartre's existentialism may be understood in the sense that the degree of happiness which an individual can hope to attain is governed by his willingness to take his stand in accordance with his ethos and to accept the consequences thereof; this is a more austere interpretation of a philosophy admirably expressed by Nobel's contemporary, Ralph Waldo Emerson:"