Word of the Day

: October 8, 2023

obtain

verb ub-TAYN

What It Means

To obtain something is to gain or get it usually by planned action or effort, as opposed to chance, purchase, or another method.

// The experiment was designed to obtain more accurate data about weather patterns.

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obtain in Context

“Declining species, like spotted owls, may be hard to see, but recordings may help document the numbers of the species. ‘There’s an acute need to obtain more sound recordings of many species, of the dawn chorus and sounds at night,’ Benner says. He uses recordings of red crossbills to understand the populations of that species, a type of finch, that occur in Southern California and in the Sierra Nevada.” — Dakota Kim, The Los Angeles Times, 10 Aug. 2023

Did You Know?

If you have difficulty choosing whether to use obtain or attain in a sentence, don’t worry, we get it. Both can mean “to get” or “to acquire,” and in some situations can be used synonymously, but one or the other might be more appropriate depending on what is being acquired and how. One clue is their respective etymologies: obtain comes to us via Anglo-French from the Latin verb obtinēre, meaning “to hold on to, possess,” while attain’s Anglo-French ancestor is ateindre, meaning “to reach” or “to accomplish.” Accordingly, obtain is usually the word used when you are acquiring, by planned effort, a tangible object—something you can hold. “We are having trouble obtaining the supplies we need” sounds natural, for example, while “Have you attained the sugar and flour I asked for?” does not. Reflecting its roots (and also implying effort), attain is often used in the same way as achieve, as in “After decades of hard work she attained her goal of earning a PhD.” Of course, one can also obtain intangible things, such as power or information, so consider this advice something to hold onto and consider when the moment arises—you needn’t cling to it.