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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
ascribe
verb
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But to ascribe this to male chauvinism wouldn't be accurate either.
▪ Sammler mastered and dismissed this suspicion, ascribing it to surprise and nervousness.
▪ Similarly, her consideration of wearing a crucifix as jewellery was linked to assumptions that individuals might ascribe to the wearer.
▪ There seems no particular reason to ascribe economic rationality to one group and not the other.
▪ This effort to ascribe blame makes no sense, because the dip was too small to matter.
▪ We could ascribe these setbacks to the fact that our regime is young, or make other excuses.
▪ We may be quite right to ascribe agency to a child for his acts.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Ascribe

Ascribe \As*cribe"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Ascribed; p. pr. & vb. n. Ascribing.] [L. ascribere, adscribere, to ascribe; ad + scribere to write: cf. OF. ascrire. See Scribe.]

  1. To attribute, impute, or refer, as to a cause; as, his death was ascribed to a poison; to ascribe an effect to the right cause; to ascribe such a book to such an author.

    The finest [speech] that is ascribed to Satan in the whole poem.
    --Addison.

  2. To attribute, as a quality, or an appurtenance; to consider or allege to belong. Syn: To Ascribe, Attribute, Impute. Usage: Attribute denotes,

    1. To refer some quality or attribute to a being; as, to attribute power to God.

    2. To refer something to its cause or source; as, to attribute a backward spring to icebergs off the coast. Ascribe is used equally in both these senses, but involves a different image. To impute usually denotes to ascribe something doubtful or wrong, and hence, in general literature, has commonly a bad sense; as, to impute unworthy motives. The theological sense of impute is not here taken into view.

      More than good-will to me attribute naught.
      --Spenser.

      Ascribes his gettings to his parts and merit.
      --Pope.

      And fairly quit him of the imputed blame.
      --Spenser.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
ascribe

mid-14c., ascrive, from Old French ascrivre "to inscribe; attribute, impute," from Latin ascribere "to write in, to add to in a writing," from ad- "to" (see ad-) + scribere "to write" (see script (n.)). Spelling restored by 16c. Related: Ascribed; ascribing.

Wiktionary
ascribe

vb. 1 (context transitive English) To attribute a cause or characteristic to someone or something. 2 (context transitive English) To attribute a book, painting or any work of art or literature to a writer or creator.

WordNet
ascribe

v. attribute or credit to; "We attributed this quotation to Shakespeare"; "People impute great cleverness to cats" [syn: impute, assign, attribute]

Wikipedia

Usage examples of "ascribe".

Privately I ascribed her immunity to the fact that, being a woman, she escaped most of the cuts and abrasions to which we hard-working men were subject in the course of working the Snark around the world.

The dropping of acquaintanceship with him, after the taste of its privileges, she ascribed, in the void of any better elucidation, to a mania of aristocratic conceit.

In like manner he sometimes ascribed to the Apostles a unique possession of the Holy Spirit, and at other times, adhering to a primitive Christian idea, he denied this thesis.

And the metaphorical style of the Hebrews might ascribe to a saint and martyr the adoptive title of Son of God.

The ancipital race, to which we can ascribe many of our human difficulties over the ages, is not a race of new invaders, like the Driats.

This is quite a bit more recent than the Early Pleistocene date originally ascribed to the Piltdown fossils, but it is still anomalously old for a skull of the fully human type in England.

But as some decent mixture of prodigy and fable has, in every age, been supposed to reflect a becoming majesty on the origin of great cities, the emperor was desirous of ascribing his resolution, not so much to the uncertain counsels of human policy, as to the infallible and eternal decrees of divine wisdom.

Those who have reported their opinions to us, from the earliest Jesuit missionaries to the latest investigators of their mental characteristics, concur in ascribing to them a deep trust in a life to come, a cheerful view of its conditions, and a remarkable freedom from the dread of dying.

That we do not err in ascribing this belief to Paul we might summon the whole body of the Fathers to testify in almost unbroken phalanx, from Polycarp to St.

And though this reasoning may contradict the systems of many philosophers, in ascribing necessity to the determinations of the will, we shall find, upon reflection, that they dissent from it in words only, not in their real sentiment.

Or were it ever so much a perfection, the ascribing of it to the Supreme Being, where it appears not to have been really exerted, to the full, in his works, savours more of flattery and panegyric, than of just reasoning and sound philosophy.

The broken army of the Goths abandoned the field of battle, the wasted province, and the passage of the Danube: and although the eldest of the sons of Constantine was permitted to supply the place of his father, the merit of the victory, which diffused universal joy, was ascribed to the auspicious counsels of the emperor himself.

This chapel is given as completed in the 1586 edition of Caccia, and had probably been by this time reconstructed by Tabachetti, to whom the work is universally and no doubt justly ascribed.

Clay Wallace of New York, who published a very ingenious little book on the eye about twenty years ago, with vignettes reminding one of Bewick, was among the first, if not the first, to describe the ciliary muscle, to which the power of adjustment is generally ascribed.

The doctor added that I would have died long before, had not nature, in its wish for life, assisted itself, and he concluded by stating that the cause of the thickness of my blood could only be ascribed to the air I was breathing and that consequently I must have a change of air, or every hope of cure be abandoned.