What is "attribute"

Attribute \At"tri*bute\, n. [L. attributum.]

1. That which is attributed; a quality which is considered as belonging to, or inherent in, a person or thing; an essential or necessary property or characteristic.

   But mercy is above this sceptered away; . . . It is an attribute to God himself.
   --Shak.

2. Reputation. [Poetic]
   --Shak.

3. (Paint. & Sculp.) A conventional symbol of office, character, or identity, added to any particular figure; as, a club is the attribute of Hercules.

4. (Gram.) Quality, etc., denoted by an attributive; an attributive adjunct or adjective.

Attribute \At*trib"ute\ ([a^]t"tr[i^]*b[=u]t), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Attributed; p. pr. & vb. n. Attributing.] [L. attributus, p. p. of attribuere; ad + tribuere to bestow. See Tribute.] To ascribe; to consider (something) as due or appropriate (to); to refer, as an effect to a cause; to impute; to assign; to consider as belonging (to).

We attribute nothing to God that hath any repugnancy or contradiction in it.
--Abp. Tillotson.

The merit of service is seldom attributed to the true and exact performer.
--Shak.

Syn: See Ascribe.

late 14c., "assign, bestow," from Latin attributus, past participle of attribuere "assign to, add, bestow;" figuratively "to attribute, ascribe, impute," from ad- "to" + tribuere "assign, give, bestow" (see tribute). Related: Attributed; attributing.

"quality ascribed to someone," late 14c., from Latin attributum "anything attributed," noun use of neuter of attributus (see attribute (v.)). Distinguished from the verb by pronunciation.\n

n. 1 A characteristic or quality of a thing. 2 (context grammar English) A word that qualifies a noun, a qualifier. 3 (context logic English) That which is predicated or affirmed of a subject; a predicate; an accident. 4 (context computing English) An option or setting belonging to some object. 5 (context computing programming English) A semantic item with which a method or other code element may be decorated. vb. 1 To ascribe (something) (term: to) a given cause, reason etc. 2 To associate ownership or authorship of (something) (term: to) someone.

1. n. a construct whereby objects or individuals can be distinguished; "self-confidence is not an endearing property" [syn: property, dimension]

2. an abstraction belonging to or characteristic of an entity

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

4. decide as to where something belongs in a scheme; "The biologist assigned the mushroom to the proper class" [syn: assign]

Attribute may refer to:

• property, or a conclusion of a characteristic of an entity or substance
• Attribute (research), a characteristic of an object (man, thing, etc.)
• grammatical modifier, in linguistics, a syntax unit, either a word, phrase or clause, that modifies a noun
• Attribute grammar, in formal computer languages

An attribute is a piece of data (a " statistic") that describes to what extent a fictional character in a role-playing game possesses a specific natural, in-born characteristic common to all characters in the game. That piece of data is usually an abstract number or, in some cases, a set of dice. Some games use different terms to refer to an attribute, such as statistic, (primary) characteristic or ability. A number of role-playing games like Fate do not use attributes at all.

In computing, an attribute is a specification that defines a property of an object, element, or file. It may also refer to or set the specific value for a given instance of such. For clarity, attributes should more correctly be considered metadata. An attribute is frequently and generally a property of a property. However, in actual usage, the term attribute can and is often treated as equivalent to a property depending on the technology being discussed. An attribute of an object usually consists of a name and a value; of an element, a type or class name; of a file, a name and extension.

• Each named attribute has an associated set of rules called operations: one doesn't sum characters or manipulate and process an integer array as an image object— one doesn't process text as type floating point ( decimal numbers).
• It follows that an object definition can be extended by imposing data typing: a representation format, a default value, and legal operations (rules) and restrictions ("Division by zero is not to be tolerated!") are all potentially involved in defining an attribute, or conversely, may be spoken of as attributes of that object's type. A JPEG file is not decoded by the same operations (however similar they may be—these are all graphics data formats) as a PNG or BMP file, nor is a floating point typed number operated upon by the rules applied to typed long integers.

For example, in computer graphics, line objects can have attributes such as thickness (with real values), color (with descriptive values such as brown or green or values defined in a certain color model, such as RGB), dashing attributes, etc. A circle object can be defined in similar attributes plus an origin and radius.