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/ˈætrəbjˌut/ /ətrˈɪbjˌut/ Listen

noun

Attribute n.

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."

Reputation. (Poetic)

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

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

verb

Attribute v. t. (past & past part. attributed; pres. part. attributing) 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." "The merit of service is seldom attributed to the true and exact performer."

Synonyms: See Ascribe.

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Etymology of 'Attribute'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Attribute" Quotes from Famous Books

... to become the scapegoat for the general transgression. This, he argued, was no fantastic scheme, but even easy of accomplishment; for the unlimited and sacred power of the Khan, so well known to the Empress, made it absolutely iniquitous to attribute any separate responsibility to the people—upon the Khan rested the guilt, upon the Khan would descend the Imperial vengeance. This proposal was applauded for its generosity, but was energetically opposed by Zebek-Dorchi. Were they to lose the whole journey ...

— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... determined to share my home and my life with Jane Gray. Sentimental and visionary as she was, with the funny little twist in her tongue, the poor excuse of a body seemed the last place power of any kind would choose for a habitation. I was not disposed to attribute the supernatural to my companion, but from the day of her arrival unusual events popped up to ...

— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... in a plaitless gown, the contours of womanhood so undeveloped as to be scarcely perceptible, the marks of poverty and toil effaced by the misty hour, she touched sublimity at points, and looked almost like a being who had rejected with indifference the attribute of sex for the loftier quality of abstract humanism. She stooped down and cleared away the withered flowers that Grace and herself had laid there the previous week, and put her ...

— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... woman. Yes, there is in you something more precious than beauty; you are the beautiful Ideal of art, of fancy. The step you took, blamable as it would be in an ordinary young girl, allotted to an every-day destiny, has another aspect if endowed with the nature which I now attribute to you. Among the crowd of beings flung by fate into the social life of this planet to make up a generation there are exceptional souls. If your letter is the outcome of long poetic reveries on the fate which ...

— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... it is said, "man is become as one of Us, to know good and evil," because God does know evil as well as good. This is His wonderful incommunicable attribute; and man sought to share in what God was, but he could not without ceasing to be what God was also, holy and perfect. It is the incommunicable attribute of God to know evil without experiencing it. But man, when he would be as God, could only ...

— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

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