Etymologically
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attribute

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Pronunciation

  • Noun: /ˈætrɪbjuːt/[1]
  • Verb: /əˈtrɪbjuːt/[1]

Etymology

Both noun and verb go back to Latin attribūtus (“assigned, allotted”), the past participle of attribuō (“to assign, allot, ascribe”),[2][3][4][5] formed from ad- (“to”) and tribuō (“to assign, give, bestow”),[3][4][6] the verb behind tribute.[5][7] The noun continues borrowed from Latin attribūtum (“anything attributed”), the neuter of the participle used as a noun, in grammar "a predicate",[3][8] or its French form attribut;[9][7][10] the OED thinks it was mainly a noun use of the obsolete English adjective attribute in the sense of the past participle,[2] recorded from 1495 and taken from the Latin participle.[2][9] The verb was formed from that adjective,[2][4] which went on serving as its past participle for some time beside the regular past participle.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Noun, a quality or character ascribed to a person or thing, or an epithet expressing it: before about 1475, in the Ludus Coventriae.[2][11] Barnhart dates the noun to 1373 and Etymonline both noun and verb to the late 14th century.[4][3] The Shorter Oxford records an early sense in medicine, a condition of the bodily humours, found only in late Middle English.[9]

Semantic evolution

The verb is recorded from 1523, in Lord Berners's translation of Froissart, in the now archaic sense of assigning or granting something to a person as a right,[2][4] and soon after for ascribing an effect to a cause (1530), a quality to a person or thing (1533), and a work to an author (1599).[2] The noun gained the senses of a symbol proper to an office or figure, as in Portia's speech in The Merchant of Venice (1600), where mercy is "an attribute to God himself",[2][12][13] and of a quality inherent in a person or thing (1603).[2] Johnson (1755) gave it as "the thing attributed to another, as perfection to the Supreme Being".[13] Technical senses followed in logic (1785), grammar (1808) and statistics (1911).[2] Barnhart notes that until the 1600s the verb was usually stressed like the noun;[4] the OED finds the second-syllable stress in poets down to Dryden and Scott for both.[2] The noun is now distinguished from the verb by stress on the first syllable.[3][14]

Timeline

  • 1373 – Barnhart's date for the noun.[4]
  • ?a1475 – noun, a quality ascribed to a person or thing.[2]
  • 1495 – adjective, attributed, assigned (obsolete after the 16th century).[2][9]
  • 1523 – verb, to assign or grant as a right.[2][4]
  • 1530 – verb, to ascribe an effect to a cause.[2]
  • 1599 – verb, to ascribe a work to an author.[2]
  • 1600 – noun, a symbol appropriate to an office or person.[2]
  • 1603 – noun, an inherent characteristic.[2]
  • 1808 – noun, in grammar, an attributive word.[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. A quality, feature or characteristic belonging to or typical of a person or thing: Courage was not among his attributes.
  2. An object regarded as the symbol of an office, person or deity, especially in painting and sculpture.
  3. (grammar) An adjective or adjectival word or phrase that qualifies a noun.
  4. (logic, statistics) A property that may be predicated of a thing, or a quality used as a basis for classification.

Verb

  1. To regard something as caused by or resulting from something, usually with to: The delay was attributed to fog.
  2. To regard a work as made or written by a particular person: The sonnet is attributed to an unknown courtier.
  3. To consider a quality or characteristic as belonging to someone or something; to ascribe.

Word family

  • attributable
  • attributer
  • misattribute
  • reattribute
  • attribution

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  5. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  6. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  8. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  9. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  10. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  11. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
  12. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  13. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  14. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press