verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
achieve a breakthrough
▪ With further funding, the research team hope to be able to achieve a breakthrough.
achieve a consensus
▪ Will further talks achieve a consensus on the UN peace plan?
achieve a gradeBrE:
▪ Rick had achieved good exam grades.
achieve a settlement (=after a lot of discussions)
▪ The government was determined to achieve a settlement in Northern Ireland.
achieve equality
▪ He praised the generations who struggled to achieve racial equality.
achieve growth
▪ After the war, Europe achieved remarkable economic growth.
achieve happiness
▪ He would never achieve true happiness until he took control of his life.
achieve harmony
▪ If this really is a fair society, why is it taking so long to achieve racial harmony?
achieve popularity (=become popular)
▪ Her books achieved tremendous popularity on both sides of the Atlantic.
achieve progress
▪ The talks ended with no real progress having been achieved.
achieve recognition
▪ Toni has been striving to achieve recognition for the past ten years.
achieve your own ends (=to get what you want, used to show disapproval)
▪ Some people would do almost anything to achieve their own ends.
achieve your purpose (=achieve what you wanted to achieve)
▪ She had achieved her purpose, at least in part.
achieve/accomplish an objective (also attain an objectiveformal)
▪ The policy should help us achieve our objective of reducing paper waste.
achieve/attain/reach your goal
▪ She has worked hard to achieve her goal of a job in the medical profession.
▪ They’re hoping to reach their goal of raising £10,000 for charity.
achieved...renown
▪ He achieved some renown as a football player.
achieve/find fame
▪ Amy Johnson found fame as a pilot.
achieve/fulfil your aim
▪ The Internet bank achieved its aim of attracting 50,000 customers last year.
▪ Once she had decided to go into publishing, she set out to fulfil her aim.
achieve/fulfil/reach/realize your potential (=succeed as much as you have the potential to succeed)
▪ A lot of athletes find it difficult to achieve their potential.
achieve/fulfil/realize a dream (=do or get what you want)
▪ He had finally achieved his dream of winning an Olympic gold medal.
achieve/fulfil/realize your ambition (=do what you wanted to do)
▪ It took her ten years to achieve her ambition.
▪ He was prepared to go to any lengths to fulfil his ambition.
▪ I want to thank all those who made it possible for me to realize a lifetime 's ambition.
achieve/obtain a result
▪ You can achieve the same result by simply clicking on the menu.
achieve/obtain/gain statehood
▪ Utah obtained statehood in 1896.
achieve/reach a level
▪ China’s imports of wheat reached record levels.
acquire/achieve/gain/develop competence
▪ First you have to acquire competence in methods of research.
come to/rise to/achieve prominence (as sth)
▪ She first came to prominence as an artist in 1989.
gain/achieve mastery of sth
▪ He has definitely achieved mastery of this very difficult subject.
gain/achieve/win independence (=get independence)
▪ Our aim was to achieve full independence.
gain/win/achieve notoriety (for sth)
▪ The local church has gained notoriety for being different.
have/achieve success
▪ China has had considerable success in conserving water since 1983.
perform/accomplish/achieve a feat
▪ the woman who performed the feat of sailing around the world alone
reach/achieve/hit a target (=meet it)
▪ They achieved their target with just days to spare.
receive/get/achieve/score a rating
▪ The Department of Computer Science received a top rating last year.
rise to/achieve/reach a rank (also attain a rankformal)
▪ He rose to the rank of colonel.
strike/achieve/find a balance (=succeed in getting the right balance)
▪ It is necessary to strike a balance between the needs of employers and employees.
▪ Find the right balance between enough exercise and enough rest.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
aim
▪ The two main aims were achieved across the board.
▪ Backed by such organizations, they returned to mainstream institutions with the aim of achieving genuine reform.
▪ The tactics by which such aims were to be achieved were reformist and not revolutionary.
▪ The aim is to achieve a sharper understanding of what is involved in logical ability.
▪ To a considerable extent these aims are being achieved.
▪ This chapter explains how that aim was achieved.
▪ The aim is to achieve a high level of income with the prospect of long-term capital growth.
▪ A worthy aim, well achieved by the camera.
ambition
▪ He has at last achieved his ambition to look both indistinguishable and distinctive.
▪ He had achieved his life's ambition.
▪ Would she herself end up like that, if she achieved her ambition of becoming the managing editor of a magazine?
▪ Ivan Lendl will not achieve his last great ambition - to be Wimbledon Singles Champion. 8.
▪ It was not until last year that I achieved my ambition to sail there.
▪ Five days later Vernage was to achieve his gruesome ambition to kill a policeman.
balance
▪ At the wider level each of the units has to be sequenced to achieve a balance through the entire key stage.
▪ Years later, I am constantly adjusting my feelings downward to achieve that fine balance of caution and melancholy. 30.
▪ It demands considerable skills to achieve the delicate balance required between the painted finish and the natural grain of the timber.
▪ The management have achieved an excellent balance between service and relaxed atmosphere which is felt throughout the hotel.
▪ To achieve a balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide, one human needed 8 square metres of exposed Chlorella.
▪ Seemingly, two separate conditions must be satisfied to achieve proper balance.
▪ Maybe some other race of intelligent beings elsewhere in the galaxy will achieve a better balance between responsibility and aggression.
▪ The central dilemma the Committee faced was how to achieve a balance in company boards between strong direction and accountability.
change
▪ The information at the centre will permit the board to determine exactly how close it is to achieving these change management objectives.
▪ He added that she couldn't achieve dramatic change alone.
▪ This reduction was achieved by a change in the calculation of the uprating of these additions.
▪ You will not succeed by assuming that decisions alone will achieve behavior change.
▪ Stealth and persuasion were obviously required to achieve this change by democratic means.
▪ Equilibrium is achieved through changes in the interest rate and the exchange rate. 2.
▪ The consequences of technical change are influenced at least as much as by the objectives that managers seek to achieve in introducing change.
▪ The emphasis of action taken in favour of DRAs must be to achieve permanent changes in income earning potential and social cohesion.
effect
▪ Basking in this praise, he went into considerable technical detail about how he had achieved the effect.
▪ He spoke for about five minutes and achieved the desired effect.
▪ Again, we have achieved a cross over effect.
▪ Sleeping on a contoured pillow will achieve the same effect if you prefer sleeping on foam rather than feathers.
▪ I found that by adding white I could achieve my desired effect.
▪ The playing with words to achieve effect in the description of the progress of the wave is fascinating.
▪ So an illustration may offer far wider possibilities for the art director to achieve special effects and a distinctive style.
▪ A satisfactory surplus has been achieved and the effect of the decline in membership and examination entries has been contained.
effort
▪ Often this effort achieves its end as baroque comedy.
▪ Today, you need a coordinated effort to help you achieve success.
▪ Was the new design perhaps unconsciously modelled on the Sun newspaper, in an effort to achieve similar sales figures?
▪ Program evaluation is concerned specifically with determining the worth or values of efforts expended to achieve a given purpose or objective.
▪ And there are few effects which require more time or effort to achieve.
▪ His father emphasized strenuous effort to achieve goals and total obedience to those in authority, and he ranted about corrupt politicians.
▪ In defining modules in terms of student effort a basis is achieved for comparing arts and science modules with their differing class contact time.
▪ Human survival is the final indispensable objective of all efforts to achieve a universal humane competence in 1985.
end
▪ Like the fighters he clearly adores, Toole relies on pacing and power to achieve his ends.
▪ Among organizations that regularly fail to achieve their ends, this is precisely what happens.
▪ With brute force techniques ... they do achieve about the same end result as we do with much more sophisticated techniques.
▪ Under optimal circumstances, reorganizing can help a struggling organization achieve any of these ends.
▪ We may need to find alternative means achieve some end.
▪ In low slack systems, vigorous competition in the environment prevents managers from easily tailoring their activities to achieve personal ends.
▪ Clearly, within particular realms of human experience they may play crucial roles in assisting individuals and groups to achieve their ends.
▪ He said the Treasury is trying to achieve its ends in the least burdensome way possible.
feat
▪ He achieved the very considerable feat of isolating a material, demonstrating its purity and getting an analysis of the elements present.
▪ He could become the first Buck to achieve the statistical feat for the season since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar did it in 1974-75.
▪ Givaudon achieved his feat simply by soaking the growing shoots of plants in colchicine.
▪ Powell achieved a similar feat, but then resigned.
▪ That way, says Denis, you can achieve the sometimes difficult feat of appearing interested in what is being said.
▪ At one level this has enabled him to achieve the considerable feat of maintaining reasonably stable government for more than twenty years.
▪ I had achieved the remarkable feat of uniting the two factions at the party in mockery of me.
goal
▪ But they gave no timeframe to achieve such a goal.
▪ If a group can achieve its goals through the sum of individual contributions, then the traditional working group makes sense.
▪ Adaptation to a changing environment may be necessary as before to achieve traditional goals.
▪ If you do this for the next ten years you will have achieved 360 of your goals.
▪ It is most important that the patient considers the likely consequences of different ways of trying to achieve goals.
▪ In time Carville would achieve many of the goals set by the administration.
▪ The difficult bit is knowing how to achieve those goals.
▪ Steering organizations need to find the best methods to achieve their goals.
growth
▪ The capital increase is to help speed the investment programme and to achieve Olivetti's growth targets.
▪ Once the plant has achieved reasonable growth it should be transplanted in the aquarium.
▪ Like all agencies operating in a squeezed market, it faces the challenge of achieving corporate growth.
▪ We aim to ensure that managers will be more effective, achieve personal growth and contribute to corporate development.
▪ It also accepted that only free markets could achieve economic growth.
▪ Such policies may hinder attempts to achieve economic growth and may increase the level of unemployment.
▪ Those economies which have successfully switched underemployed agricultural labour into manufacturing and service activities have generally achieved significant real economic growth rates.
level
▪ Analogously, computerised text recognition needs to use higher level knowledge to achieve comparable levels of performance.
▪ To achieve the highest levels of profit the Profitboss sets to achieve the highest levels of trust within his team.
▪ In rested subjects alpha rhythm is indicative of low arousal, but sleep-deprived subjects commonly only achieve this level of arousal at best.
▪ It does not allow for the pupil who is able to achieve in this example level 6.
▪ Presumably all that has been compared is the percentage of pupils achieving certain levels at age 11 and then at 14.
▪ Val Pinder who has been away for some months due to illness achieves a fantastic level of sales and came in fourth.
▪ By definition, many thirteen-year-olds in secondary schools will be achieving at the level of many sixteen-year-olds.
▪ Because, perhaps surprisingly to its critics, the survey reveals lawyers are achieving an impressively high level of client satisfaction.
means
▪ Obviously, there is room for debate about the means of achieving those objectives and how accommodating our criteria should be.
▪ The lawyer is responsible for working with the client to decide the best means to achieve those objectives.
▪ Management accounting Planning means deciding objectives and the means for achieving them.
▪ Where the consensus broke down was over the means used to achieve the goals.
▪ The managed mixed economy and a highly developed system of collective social provision were the means for achieving these values.
▪ The quest for quality is continuing, but the best means of achieving it are debatable.
▪ Laura had been perceptive enough to create the means of achieving this.
▪ And for the first time, they had the means to achieve it.
objective
▪ Obviously, there is room for debate about the means of achieving those objectives and how accommodating our criteria should be.
▪ In the current chapter we probe deeper into trade structure in order to achieve two objectives.
▪ It didn't come back with a refusal and allow us to discuss alternative ways of achieving our objective.
▪ And they were prepared to accept unlimited losses to achieve their sacred objective.
▪ The information at the centre will permit the board to determine exactly how close it is to achieving these change management objectives.
▪ To achieve this objective, communities could choose from a long list of eligible activities specified in the legislation.
▪ Suppliers are expected to propose one or more strategies which will achieve the objectives described in this document.
▪ None of these visionary schemes for Niagara ever reached fruition, but one Utopian dreamer did achieve his objective.
purpose
▪ In general, however, the scheme has been successful and has achieved the purposes for which it was instituted.
▪ When I die, I can, if I am lucky, die knowing that I have achieved my purposes.
▪ A group is a collection of individual people who come together to achieve some purpose.
▪ They concentrate ori mobilizing and deploying capital, labor, and technology to achieve desired purposes.
▪ The plotter had achieved his purpose.
▪ Program evaluation is concerned specifically with determining the worth or values of efforts expended to achieve a given purpose or objective.
▪ A prudential practice is instrumental in nature, being designed to achieve a specific substantive purpose.
▪ But groups can employ a variety of strategies to achieve this purpose.
rate
▪ Practices with less stable populations would have to run shorter cycles to achieve similar detection rates.
▪ You can also switch down to medium graphics to achieve higher frame rates but you lose a big portion of the experience.
▪ She stressed, however, that that could be achieved only through interest rates.
▪ But no country has yet managed to achieve a low birth rate while infant deaths rates remain high.
▪ In Figure 16.9, equilibrium is achieved with a rate of interest re and a quantity of money Me.
▪ Government surveys generally achieve a good response rate.
▪ You thus have plenty of opportunity to achieve the keenest interest rate and save money.
▪ You are probably doing well with toddlers if you achieve a success rate of between 50 and 70 percent.
recognition
▪ All of these situations produce character-level ambiguity which must be reduced to achieve good recognition performance.
▪ The training to achieve a recognition speed of 6o characters per second was accomplished in 3 1 / 2 hours.
▪ Access to the compound tree is achieved through the word recognition tree.
▪ They had to achieve managerial recognition that accountability to colleagues in the team was important alongside accountability to individual agencies.
▪ For example: Handwriting contains many similarly shaped characters which must be distinguished from each other to achieve effective recognition.
▪ Not to have achieved recognition as a failure, felt Dyson, was almost worse than the failing itself.
reduction
▪ Many hoped to achieve a reduction in numbers of follow up appointments.
▪ How does Health Secretary Virginia Bottomley hope to achieve a ten percent reduction in smokers without a ban on tobacco ads?
▪ Even more importantly, it can achieve dramatic reductions in the amount of energy used.
▪ For this reason it is not often possible to achieve a reduction in space requirement by using an inverted file.
▪ It is unlikely that when they signed they could ever have had the slightest hope of achieving such a reduction.
▪ Naturally, networks that achieve such frequency-dependent reduction are termed filters.
▪ Therefore after six months the dieter is behaving according to all twenty-six goals and she has achieved a considerable reduction in sugar intake.
▪ To set up a working group to look at ways of achieving a reduction of differentials for next year.
result
▪ The subsequent establishment of a one-party state would have achieved the same result.
▪ They also introduced bills that would achieve the same result.
▪ The draftsman employed several different forms of words to achieve this result.
▪ Failure in government is not failure to achieve results, it is failure to secure reelection.
▪ Effectiveness: ensuring that the output from any given activity is achieving the desired results.
▪ It is your positive actions coupled with a positive attitude that will achieve results.
▪ It is of course possible to be an effective manager without coaching but by using this skill you can achieve even better results.
▪ An alternative procedure which achieves the same result but is more convenient computationally is the following.
settlement
▪ If the Commission thinks the case admissible and worth proceeding with, it sees if it can achieve a friendly settlement.
▪ The flawed Geneva accommodation had postponed rather than achieved a settlement.
▪ This evidence assisted, I understand, in achieving a seven-figure settlement offer.
▪ No one can underestimate the difficulties implicit in achieving a negotiated settlement.
▪ It plans to issue a protective writ but is hoping to achieve a settlement.
standard
▪ The early stages are the most critical in achieving high environmental standards and safe operation.
▪ Place more stress on ensuring that students achieve high academic standards.
▪ His responsibility is to ensure that a particular package has achieved the quality standards set by the project which is using it.
▪ Fears not being influential... failure to achieve their standards.
▪ Students who achieve an acceptable standard may have the opportunity to progress to degree studies.
▪ Providing a sense of accomplishment and recognition to those achieving standards of performance 5.
▪ In addition, all regional buyers inspect and approve all raw material stores personally to ensure they achieve our laid down standards.
▪ He had achieved, by the standards of Wall Street, technical mastery of his subject.
status
▪ If the vote is successful, the school could achieve grant maintained status by September next year.
▪ He saw the company achieve its current status of international acclaim.
▪ A society of master chefs was formed to achieve professional status similar to that of doctors or lawyers for its members.
▪ Bhagat Singh, the presumed killer, eluded arrest and quickly achieved the status of hero.
▪ After he achieved celebrity status through Dynasty he took to visiting hospitals and rehabilitation centres warning youngsters of the dangers of drugs.
▪ Sutherland had achieved canonical status in the field by devising a computer program called Sketchpad.
▪ It will only take a short time before non-specialist schools achieve the same status as secondary moderns.
▪ Married women began to achieve legal status as individuals in their own right.
success
▪ Despite our analysis, most of our engineers felt that they were achieving professional success and personal satisfaction.
▪ To achieve electoral success, pragmatic parties might shift their position or expand the range of viewpoints they encompass.
▪ Operational highlights Our operating activities during 1992 have achieved a number of successes.
▪ The cards tell me that the path you have chosen is rocky, but with total dedication you will achieve success.
▪ And in the third year of his presidency, he actually achieved some remarkable successes in that area.
▪ You are thus delegating the right to achieve failure as well as success.
▪ Others achieve more success with more discrete behind-the. scenes strategies, such as alliances and coalitions.
target
▪ How can they achieve maximum or target levels of profits or sales without precise information concerning their revenues and costs?
▪ The new group did not in fact achieve its target of 100,000 pledged supporters and had faded away by March.
▪ With Thames privatised, it is a private sector project with appropriate incentives paid to workers who achieve their targets.
▪ Success is when you achieve your target 20 percent return on assets at the year's end.
▪ Managers will need education and training to achieve the targets set.
▪ Joan formed a ladies' committee at Trentham Park Golf Club dedicated to achieving the target.
▪ They achieved 173 percent of target.
way
▪ This is an outline of the way speed can be achieved during normal updating.
▪ Have the clients brainstorm other ways they could achieve the desired effects without overdrinking.
▪ More subtle and effective, but much more involved, ways of achieving the same end have been devised.
▪ Not only does it discredit traditional replication techniques, it also steers the organization toward less costly ways of achieving its ends.
▪ There must be a better way to achieve a city at peace with itself.
▪ There are many ways people can achieve long-term financial goals.
▪ In addition, the students should be allowed to choose the way they prefer to achieve mastery of the material of the unit.
▪ The occasion challenged her to either alter her vision or to imagine new ways of achieving it.
■ VERB
fail
▪ In the narrow sense, it failed to achieve its specific aims.
▪ Several Congressmen criticized the Mahatma for having failed to achieve a concrete fraction of independence.
▪ In the epinephrine group, the only case who failed to achieve initial haemostasis received surgical intervention.
▪ Reagan had failed to achieve his basic goals in foreign policy.
▪ He failed to achieve this but remained in the country with his friend John Bell.
▪ It fails to achieve this questionable end for reasons that struggling organizations seldom understand.
▪ When Sheila Sheffield fails to achieve her quota for the quarter, he helps Sheila discover the reasons.
▪ You can do your job and fail to achieve the results that your job was Originally meant to serve.
help
▪ What seems to be of more use to people are specific things they can do to help them achieve these states.
▪ They achieve the competitive edge because everyone is helping to achieve it.
▪ These are all assets which not everyone has and can help you in achieving your goals.
▪ At least two basic steps could help achieve this goal.
▪ Delegates also called for increased formal training to help achieve higher and more consistent standards.
▪ Apart from the victims are the accomplices, who - knowingly or unknowingly - help the hypocrite to achieve his goals.
▪ They do also help to achieve and sustain rapport and stimulate the respondent's thinking.
▪ Aiming at these targets will help you to achieve the goals fixed for all students. 8.
hope
▪ There are three main ways in which the government hopes to achieve its aims.
▪ The profit at the end of the first year was greater than either Liz or Carol had hoped to achieve.
▪ What had they hoped to achieve?
▪ They hope to achieve the functionality of the vertebrate brain in a silicon machine.
▪ She wasn't quite sure where she hoped to get to, what she hoped to achieve, but it felt right.
▪ Your mission statement should describe the business you are in and what you hope to achieve.
try
▪ We all know only too well how disheartening it can be to try hard but achieve nothing.
▪ The women who are trying to achieve the ultimate in feminine physical perfection, ironically, look surprisingly like men.
▪ Don't try to achieve a design in stark black and white.
▪ Step 3 For each point state the most likely settlement that you and the other party will try to achieve.
▪ In other words, the drafter must understand what he/she is trying to achieve.
▪ Will you please tell me what you are trying to achieve?
▪ That encompasses what we are trying to achieve.
▪ Later more imaginative tactics were adopted to try to achieve maximum disruption for a small loss of earnings.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ He had achieved all his goals for the organization, and felt there were no challenges left there for him.
▪ My parents constantly encouraged me to achieve.
▪ On the test drive, Segrave achieved speeds of over 200 mph.
▪ She's achieved a lot in the short time she's been with the company.
▪ The reason I achieve good results is because I work hard -- and so could you.
▪ The software division expects to achieve its sales targets this year.
▪ When you get your MA, you really feel that you've achieved something.
▪ Women have yet to achieve full equality in the workplace.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Control may also be achieved through resource management, such as social insurance schemes or payment of retainers or fees for service.
▪ He may achieve a little more animation this time if Party Politics wins him his place in history.
▪ If the AlomarHirschbeck rapprochement were to be achieved, it would only be the latest in a growing apology fad.
▪ In a world of shifting boundaries, vanishing borders, and proliferating frontiers, security is even more difficult to achieve.
▪ Perhaps multiculturalism, in its achieved form, was a polyphony of just such well-trained voices.
▪ This will enable businesses to sell more widely, achieving greater economies of scale.
▪ Until that happy day, the only way to achieve an enjoyable and comfortable life is to work for it.
▪ Young men's friendships rarely achieve the depth of intimacy of young women's.