ascribe

[uh-skrahyb]

verb (used with object)

ascribed, ascribing 

1. to credit or assign, as to a cause or source; attribute; impute.

   The alphabet is usually ascribed to the Phoenicians.

2. to attribute or think of as belonging, as a quality or characteristic.

   They ascribed courage to me for something I did out of sheer panic.

ascribe

/ əˈskraɪb /

verb

1. to credit or assign, as to a particular origin or period

   to ascribe parts of a play to Shakespeare

2. to attribute as a quality; consider as belonging to

   to ascribe beauty to youth

Usage

Ascribe is sometimes wrongly used where subscribe is meant: I do not subscribe (not ascribe ) to this view

Other Word Forms

• ascribable adjective
• unascribed adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of ascribe¹

1400–50; late Middle English < Latin ascrībere, equivalent to a- a- ⁵ + scrībere to scribe ²; replacing Middle English ascrive < Middle French. See shrive

Word History and Origins

Origin of ascribe¹

C15: from Latin ascrībere to enrol, from ad in addition + scrībere to write

Synonym Study

See attribute.

Example Sentences

But by the 1980s, much chimp behavior was being interpreted in ways that would have been labeled anthropomorphism — ascribing human traits to non-human entities — decades earlier.

From Los Angeles Times

Of course, facts are important, but they don’t necessarily reveal anything; it is the biographer’s folly to ascribe deeper meaning to them, to extrapolate truth from a disparate series of events.

From Los Angeles Times

In that vacuum, Republicans have often ascribed political bias as the motivation without providing concrete evidence to back it up, said Stevenson, the debanking expert.

From Salon

It was also a "tough" decision because Mr Veevers did not ascribe to a specific custom, and no will had been presented to show that he wished "to exit the world in a certain way".

From BBC

He claimed Obergefell “inevitably set in conflict between those who ascribe to the Supreme Court’s edict and those who have a firmly held religious belief that marriage is between a man and a woman.”

From Salon

Related Words

• attribute 
• impute