student asking question

Can I use "completed" instead of "accomplished"?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

Good question. "Accomplished" can be used as a synonym of "completed" and vice versa. As verbs there is however subtle nuance between them. "Accomplished" means to finish something successfully, "completed" on the other hand simply means to finish or reach the end of something. Because of this they can't always be used as synonyms of each other. In the case of this clip, "mission accomplished" means that they finished successfully. Changing it to "mission completed" means they finished the mission but doesn't necessarily mean it was successful. Ex: I completed my homework. (Finished but I don't know if it is successful until my homework is marked) Ex: I will complete my novel tomorrow. (Finish) Ex: He was very accomplished in his work. (He was successful) Ex: Did you accomplish everything you needed to? (Complete)

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