lortu

Lortu is a Basque verb meaning to obtain, to acquire, or to achieve. It covers both tangible acquisitions—such as money, goods, or resources—and intangible outcomes such as success, permission, or recognition. The term is common in everyday language as well as in formal writing and appears in idiomatic expressions related to attainment.

Grammar and usage: Lortu is a transitive verb; the infinitive is lortu. Basque verbs are highly inflected for tense, aspect, mood, person, and number, and lortu forms accordingly reflect the subject and the object of the action. The language’s ergative-absolutive alignment means the syntactic relationship between subject and object is encoded in the verb form rather than by fixed word order. As such, lortu can combine with a variety of postverbal elements to indicate what is obtained and when, making it versatile for concrete purchases as well as more abstract goals.

Etymology and status: The word lortu is native to Basque and does not have a widely attested cognate in related languages. It is part of everyday Basque vocabulary and is used across Basque-speaking regions and in literary contexts. In contemporary Basque, lortu appears in different tenses and moods through standard conjugation patterns, contributing to its usefulness for expressing attainment and outcomes.

See also: Basque language; Basque verbs.