attribute

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To relate to a particular cause or source; ascribe: attributed their failure to a lack of preparation.
2. v. To regard as the work of a specified agent, place, or time: attributed the painting to Titian; attributed the vase to 18th-century Japan.
3. n. A quality or characteristic inherent in or ascribed to someone or something.
4. n. An object associated with and serving to identify a character, personage, or office: Lightning bolts are an attribute of Zeus.
5. n. Grammar A word or phrase syntactically subordinate to another word or phrase that it modifies; for example, my sister's and brown in my sister's brown dog.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To ascribe; impute; consider as belonging or as due; assign.
2. Synonyms Attribute, Ascribe, Refer, Impute, Charge, have two meanings in common: they may assign some attribute, quality, or appurtenance to a person or thing, or they may connect different things, as an effect with its cause. Refer is the weakest. Attribute is stronger: as, to attribute omniscience to God; to attribute failure to incompetence. Ascribe, being most manifestly figurative, is the strongest and most common; it is rarely used in a bad sense. That which is imputed in the first sense named is generally but not always bad: as, to impute folly to a man. To impute anything good seems an archaic mode of expression. Impute is not very common in the second sense: as, to impute one's troubles to one's follies. The theological meaning of impute, that of laying to a person's account something good or bad that does not belong to him, has affected but little the popular use of the word. That which is charged, in either of the senses named, is bad: as, “His angels he charged with folly,” Job iv. 18; I charged it to their youth and inexperience. The word is a strong one, on account of its connection with legal processes, etc.
3. n. In logic, that which is predicated or affirmed of a subject; a predicate; an accident.
4. n. A character inseparable from its subject.
5. n. A characteristic or distinguishing mark; especially, an excellent or lofty quality or trait: as, wisdom and goodness are his attributes.
6. n. In the fine arts, a symbol of office, character, or personality: thus, the eagle is the attribute of Jupiter.
7. n. Reputation; honor.
8. n. In grammar, an attributive word; a word denoting an attribute.

Wiktionary

1. n. A characteristic or quality of a thing.
2. n. grammar A word that qualifies a noun.
3. n. computing The applicable option selection; a variable or a value.
4. n. logic That which is predicated or affirmed of a subject; a predicate; an accident.
5. n. computing, programming A semantic item with which a method, etc. may be decorated.
6. v. To ascribe (something) to a given cause, reason etc.
7. v. To associate ownership or authorship of (something) to someone.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. To ascribe; to consider (something) as due or appropriate (to); to refer, as an effect to a cause; to impute; to assign; to consider as belonging (to).
2. n. That which is attributed; a quality which is considered as belonging to, or inherent in, a person or thing; an essential or necessary property or characteristic.
3. n. Poetic Reputation.
4. n. (Paint. & Sculp.) A conventional symbol of office, character, or identity, added to any particular figure.
5. n. (Gram.) Quality, etc., denoted by an attributive; an attributive adjunct or adjective.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. attribute or credit to
2. v. decide as to where something belongs in a scheme
3. n. a construct whereby objects or individuals can be distinguished
4. n. an abstraction belonging to or characteristic of an entity