Ascribed

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /əˈskɹaɪbd/

Definitions

1. Regarded as having been caused by or originating from a particular source
2. Assigned or credited to a specific origin or reason
3. Considered to be resulting from or connected to a certain cause or author

Etymology: "Ascribed" is the past tense and past participle of "ascribe," a verb whose core idea is writing something down against a name. Its ancestor in Latin, "ascribere," meant "to state in writing," built from "ad" ("to") and "scribere" ("to write"), the same root that gives us "scribe" and "script." The sense was literal: you wrote a thing onto a record, a list, or a document, and that record assigned it to someone. The word passed into English from Middle English "ascriben," which came through Old French "ascrivre," meaning "inscribe, attribute, impute." Over that route the physical act of writing a name into a register gradually became the mental act of linking a quality, action, or result to a source. Today, when something is ascribed to a cause or author, we are still doing what the Latin speakers did: attaching a name to a thing on the record.

Synonyms: attributed, assigned