Attain vs Obtain: Difference and Comparison

Attain and obtain are two different words that are considered as the same words having the same meanings but are different and have their different meanings.

So, we will discuss the difference between these two words. “Attain” means to achieve your goal with some effort, and “Obtain” means to acquire something.

Key Takeaways

1. Attain means to achieve a goal or reach a certain level, while Obtain means to acquire or gain possession of something.
2. Attain refers to something that requires effort, while Obtain can refer to something obtained by chance.
3. Attain is used more for personal achievements, while Obtain is used more for acquiring physical objects.

Attain vs Obtain

Attain is a term used to describe achieving a goal or reaching a level of accomplishment through effort or skill, through one’s own initiative. Obtain is a term that simply means to get or acquire something, regardless of the effort involved or without implying effort or achievement.

Attain means to accomplish something with some effort. Attaining anything demands a lot of effort and hard work. It’s all about reaching your goal. Attain word only implies achieving something.

People use Attain to talk about professional goals. You can attain a high-ranking position at your company. For example, he attained the highest marks in CA.

Obtain is a verb, and it means to gain possession of something without any effort or hard work. This word is mostly used when we acquire anything.

Obtain words are also used for bringing out any idea regarding someone’s success. It is the word that is close to the attained, which means achieving something.

For example, he managed to obtain a position in the company.

Comparison Table

Parameters of Comparison	Attain	Obtain
Meaning	To achieve	To acquire
Usage	Used to achieve goals	Used to gain possession of something
Effort	Effort or hard work is required	Effort or hard work is not required
Formality	It is a formal word	It is also a formal word
Adjective	Attainable is the adjective of word attain	Obtainable is the adjective of word obtain

What is Attain?

The verb attains means to accomplish, gain or obtain something with some effort and hard work. It means to succeed in achieving something. You can attain a goal by doing hard work.

Attain is a formal word. You can understand the word attain as succeeding in doing something. As we all know, attaining something demands a lot of effort. Some examples of word attain are as follows

● They attained the highest ranks in the military exams.

● He attained his goal by working hard.

You can observe from the given examples that effort must be involved in attaining the necessary goals. The word attain is used when we want to highlight something that is coming or arriving.

Attain is all about getting something. Attain is a verb that means to reach a goal or get some achievement.

The word attain implies achieving any objective through a lot of hard work and effort. We use Attain to talk about academic goals. It is a word that is directly proportional to accomplishment.

Some examples of the word attain are as follows:

● After many days of travelling, he finally attained his destination.

● After a lot of hard work, she attained his mathematics degree.

What is Obtain?

The verb obtains means to get, acquire or secure something. It means to gain something by planned action without any effort or hard work. Obtain is a formal word.

Obtain means to get possession of anything. The most interesting thing about the word obtains is that these words start with “ob”, which is used by people to obtain any object, and the word object also starts with “ob”. For example

● The man obtained the tools that he needed for plumbing.

● He obtained a bonus through his business connection.

The word obtains means to come into possession of something. We use this word to acquire something. We see this word in formal writing.

We have understood that we use words obtained for those objects that are acquired. It can also be used to bring the idea about someone’s success.

The word obtain is quite similar to the word attain, which highlights achieving something.

The most important thing that you have to keep in mind is that attaining it requires a lot of sacrifices, effort, and hard work, while these things are not necessary for obtaining.

It only depends upon the possession of something. Here are some examples which are given below:

● He obtained a job at the university as a professor.

● He obtained all the stationery for his exams.

Main Differences Between Attain and Obtain

1. Attain means to work hard to achieve your goals, while obtain means coming into possession of something.
2. Attaining requires a lot of effort while obtaining does not require effort.
3. The word attainable is the adjective of the attain, while obtainable is the adjective of the obtain.
4. Attain requires a lot of sacrifices and hard work while obtaining does not require any sacrifice.
5. Attain does not demand any planned action, but it demands a hard word, whereas the word obtained demands a planned action.

References

1. https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amr.1993.9402210156
2. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1537-2995.2009.02314.x

Last Updated : 02 September, 2023