Learn English – Usage Of “Achieve”

meaningpassive-voiceusage

Possible usage problems of the verb "achieve":

  1. to achieve success
  2. to achieve an award
  3. to achieve a new car

I am pretty sure that the first one is okay. What about the next two?

Best Answer

Yes, "achieve an award" can be used. For instance-

The Wikipedia page of Duke of Edinburgh's Award says-

The first Gold Awards were achieved in 1958

Participation in DofE programmes and the number of Awards achieved has grown every year since 1956

It's interesting to note however that both these sentences use "achieved" in the passive voice. That, I think, is the most common usage of awards being achieved.

A lesser authoritative source here does employ the usage of "achieve an award" as described in your examples, but I'm not sure how relevant it would be.

I am pleased to let you all know that we have achieved our Full International Award. You may remember last year we achieved this award at the intermediate stage but now we have achieved the full award.

However, I'm pretty sure that "achieved a car" would be incorrect usage. It may be used to imply something on the lines of- "achieved a car as the reward for my months' of hard work", but again, it's not seen often in day-to-day usage.

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