achieving

Pluralachievings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of achieve.

   The company is achieving record profits this year.

   Achieving fluency in a second language takes years of steady practice.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs here. After a form of be, it builds the progressive (is achieving record profits). At the head of a phrase, it works as a gerund (Achieving fluency takes years). Either way it keeps the verb's grammar. It can take a direct object, or it can stand alone in the intransitive sense of succeeding, which now especially means doing well in schoolwork: students who are achieving.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   An accomplishment, or the process of reaching or completing something through sustained effort.

   Like reaching a mountain summit: both the final moment at the top and the long climb that earned it.

   The gradual achieving of self-sufficiency reshaped the village economy.

   She treated each milestone as an achieving worth celebrating.

   Similarattainment, accomplishment, realization

   Note

   Here the -ing word has become a true noun. It takes an article, joins its object with of (the achieving of self-sufficiency), and even has a plural, achievings. That is the way to tell it from the verbal gerund, which takes its object directly: achieving self-sufficiency. For a single accomplishment, achievement is the everyday word, while an achieving keeps the doing in view.

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