misattribute
Americanverb (used with object)
Other Word Forms
Explanation
To misattribute is to give the wrong person credit for doing something. If you misattribute the "To be, or not to be" speech to Homer Simpson, your teacher will probably laugh — and then gently correct you. As well as giving Shakespeare full credit for writing so many memorable lines, attribute is also used to ascribe the cause of something, and misattribute means getting it wrong. For example, you might misattribute the water on the basement floor to a recent rainstorm, when the true cause is your brother's science experiment in the laundry sink. The roots of misattribute are mis-, "wrong," and the Latin attribuere, "assign."
Vocabulary lists containing misattribute
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Patients who reported more severe tiredness or fatigue, headache, aching limbs, joint pain, chills or fever also tended to misattribute pre-existing symptoms to the vaccines, the study found.
From Washington Times ● Mar. 27, 2023
She pointed out that it can be easy to misattribute multiple infections to an individual — possibly exposing the person to public attack — when the spread has nothing to do with the person’s infectiousness.
From New York Times ● Apr. 12, 2020
But they can still flub tone or even misattribute who said what.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 4, 2015
It's very handy that you have distinct accents, because I don't want to misattribute any quotes.
From BBC ● Aug. 5, 2014
"So when parents are out with their teens supervising practice driving, I think sometimes it's easy to misattribute inexperience to deliberate risk-taking."
From Reuters ● Apr. 10, 2014
His comment about historically low correlations was misattributed to Stifel’s Thomas Carroll.
From Barron's ● Jun. 23, 2026
Correction: An earlier version of this article misattributed a quote to the character Nick.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 26, 2025
That famous quotation that is always misattributed to Voltaire, “I despise what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
From Slate ● Sep. 22, 2025
One particularly dedicated Redditor, “WannaBeDeveloper92,” created a public nine-page Google Doc breaking down the entire misattributed quote line by line, comparing each element to confirmed excerpts from Bourdain’s work.
From Salon ● Jun. 20, 2025
I stammered again, while she, I am quite sure, misattributed my embarrassment.
From In Accordance with the Evidence by Onions, Oliver [pseud.]
In the days after the meeting, social media users and bloggers began misattributing several statements from the livestream to FDA panelists, when they were actually made by independent speakers during a public comment period.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 24, 2021
Appearing on "Fox & Friends" with host Brian Kilmeade, the Fox News contributor explained that they were misattributing extortion.
From Fox News ● Nov. 12, 2019
Please refrain from misattributing popular sayings to celebrities.
From Scientific American ● Apr. 6, 2019
I think these kind of anecdotal stories are probably misattributing what campaigns get right and what they get wrong.
From Slate ● Sep. 27, 2017
Our illusion thus consists in mutually misattributing the characteristics of the unreal forms—the modes of ajñâna and the real being.
From A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1 by Dasgupta, Surendranath
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
