ASCRIBE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does ascribe mean? 

• ASCRIBE (verb)
  The verb ASCRIBE has 1 sense:

1. attribute or credit to

  Familiarity information: ASCRIBE used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ASCRIBE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they ascribe    ... he / she / it ascribes   
Past simple: ascribed   
Past participle: ascribed   
-ing form: ascribing   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Attribute or credit to

Classified under:

Verbs of thinking, judging, analyzing, doubting

Synonyms:

ascribe; assign; attribute; impute

Context example:

People impute great cleverness to cats

Hypernyms (to "ascribe" is one way to...):

evaluate; judge; pass judgment (form a critical opinion of)

Verb group:

impute (attribute (responsibility or fault) to a cause or source)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "ascribe"):

impute (attribute (responsibility or fault) to a cause or source)

carnalize; sensualize (ascribe to an origin in sensation)

credit (give someone credit for something)

reattribute (attribute to another source)

anthropomorphise; anthropomorphize (ascribe human features to something)

personate; personify (attribute human qualities to something)

accredit; credit (ascribe an achievement to)

blame; charge (attribute responsibility to)

externalise; externalize; project (regard as objective)

interiorise; interiorize; internalise; internalize (incorporate within oneself; make subjective or personal)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something to somebody
Somebody ----s something PP

Derivation:

ascribable (capable of being assigned or credited to)

ascription (assigning to a cause or source)

 Context examples 

The crime was ascribed to Nihilism, and the murderers were never arrested.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Many of the function ascribed to CTAP-III may actually be the result of processing to NAP-2.

(Platelet Basic Protein, NCI Thesaurus)

It was true, his bizarre judgments troubled her in the moments they were uttered, but she ascribed them to his novelty of type and strangeness of living, and they were soon forgotten.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

In a state between sleeping and waking, you noticed her entrance and her actions; but feverish, almost delirious as you were, you ascribed to her a goblin appearance different from her own: the long dishevelled hair, the swelled black face, the exaggerated stature, were figments of imagination; results of nightmare: the spiteful tearing of the veil was real: and it is like her.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I then thought that my father would be unjust if he ascribed my neglect to vice or faultiness on my part, but I am now convinced that he was justified in conceiving that I should not be altogether free from blame.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

My master said, he could never discover the reason of this unnatural appetite, or how these stones could be of any use to a Yahoo; but now he believed it might proceed from the same principle of avarice which I had ascribed to mankind.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

I need not remind this audience that, though Professor Summerlee, as the head of the Committee of Investigation, has been put up to speak to-night, still it is I who am the real prime mover in this business, and that it is mainly to me that any successful result must be ascribed.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It was what might be termed a sinewy, knotty strength, of the kind we ascribe to lean and wiry men, but which, in him, because of his heavy build, partook more of the enlarged gorilla order.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

By that her eye was instantly caught and long retained; and the perusal of the highly strained epitaph, in which every virtue was ascribed to her by the inconsolable husband, who must have been in some way or other her destroyer, affected her even to tears.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

A thousand times rather would I have confessed myself guilty of the crime ascribed to Justine, but I was absent when it was committed, and such a declaration would have been considered as the ravings of a madman and would not have exculpated her who suffered through me.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)