Other forms: achieved, achieving, achieves
To achieve is to succeed in reaching a goal after real effort. Achieve a result, achieve nothing, what she achieved.
The effort is part of the meaning: you achieve things that were hard, and you get things that were not. It takes a direct object — achieve a target — and cannot stand alone in the way succeed can. Note achievement, both the act and the thing done; achievable, meaning realistically possible; and underachieve and overachieve, which are both judgements about somebody's potential rather than their results.
1verbachieveTo succeed in reaching a goal after real effort.
“They achieved in three years what nobody managed in twenty.”
synonyms: accomplish, attain
achieve is a reaching of a goal.
Also accepted in games: accomplish
Old French achever means to bring to a head, from a chief, an end or head — the same Latin caput behind chief and chapter. To achieve something is to bring it to its head, which is a fair picture of finishing.
Proto-Indo-European
*kap-
Middle English
achieven
English, today
achieve
Built from
From Middle English achieven. From Middle English achieven, acheven (“to accomplish (something); to acquire or obtain (something); to carry out or finish (something); to succeed in (something); to happen, turn out”), from Anglo-Norman achever, achiever, Middle French achever, achiever, and Old French achever, achiever (“to accomplish (something); to finish (something); to succeed in (something)”) (modern French achever), and then from either of the following:
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA