obtain

<font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica"> <p> <strong> <font color="#000066">Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 8, 2023 is:</font> </strong> </p> <p> <strong>obtain</strong> &#149; \ub-TAYN\&nbsp; &#149; <em>verb</em><br /> <p>To obtain something is to gain or get it usually by planned action or effort, as opposed to chance, purchase, or another method.</p> <p>// The experiment was designed to <em>obtain</em> more accurate data about weather patterns.</p> <p><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obtain">See the entry ></a></p> </p> <p> <strong>Examples:</strong><br /> <p>“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 <em>obtain</em> 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, <em>The Los Angeles Times</em>, 10 Aug. 2023</p> </p> <p> <strong>Did you know?</strong><br /> <p>If you have difficulty choosing whether to use <em>obtain</em> or <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/attain"><em>attain</em></a> 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: <em>obtain</em> comes to us via Anglo-French from the Latin verb <em>obtinēre</em>, meaning “to hold on to, possess,” while <em>attain</em>’s Anglo-French ancestor is <em>ateindre</em>, meaning “to reach” or “to accomplish.” Accordingly, <em>obtain</em> 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