| 词组 | attain |
| 释义 | attain 1. Bryson 1984 finds fault with a less than entirely felicitous sentence from The Times of London referring to "The uncomfortable debt level attained " Attain, says Bryson, "suggests the reaching of a desired goal." A good dictionary, however, will show you that attain is not so limited in meaning. The reaching of a desired goal is indeed one of the main aspects of the verb, but it is also frequently used to indicate the reaching of a limit or the end of some sort of progression. It was this sense the Times writer probably had in mind. Here are a few examples of the use: • ... an atomic bomb was to be detonated by attaining critical mass —Murray Leinster, The Writer, May 1968 • The maximum orbit attained by the capsule —Current Biography, November 1965 • The great mountain blacksnake, entirely harmless, attains a length of eleven feet —American Guide Series: New Jersey, 1939 • We see that the maximum value... is attained at the right endpoint —School Mathematics Study Group, Calculus of Elementary Functions, Part 1, 1969 2. The intransitive attain is usually used with to: • ... Gulliver's impulse to self-advantage is such that he can attain only to a fantasy of political power — Paul Fussell, Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing, 1971 • Some writers of this sort of verse have even attained to something like celebrity —Leacock 1943 • A not dissimilar kind of childlike Latin could attain to a remarkable symmetry and balance —Henry O. Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind, 4th ed., 1925 |
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