attribute

Pluralattributes

Formsattributes, attributing, attributed

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A characteristic or quality belonging to a person or thing.

   Patience is an attribute every good teacher needs.

   The hiring panel listed the key attributes they wanted in a new manager.

   Similarquality, trait, characteristic, feature, property

   Note

   Behind the noun stands a Latin past participle, attributus, so an attribute is, at root, something attributed: a quality assigned to a person or thing. That is why it shares its form with the verb of ascribing. In use it sits comfortably with possessives and praise (his finest attribute, the key attributes of a manager). It names a quality someone has rather than one they lack.

2. 2
   verbtransitive

   To assign the ownership or authorship of something to a particular person.

   Scholars attribute the play to Shakespeare based on its style.

   The museum attributed the sculpture to a Renaissance master.

   Similarascribe, credit, assign, accredit

   Note

   Credit rather than cause: here the to-phrase names a maker or owner. The passive is the careful form. "This poem is attributed to Browning" reports a judgment about authorship rather than stating a certainty. The usage is old. In Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well, the merit of service is "seldom attributed to the true and exact performer".

3. 3
   verbtransitive

   To explain something as the result of a given cause or reason.

   Experts attribute the price increase to rising fuel costs.

   The report attributed the delay to severe weather.

   Similarimpute, lay

   Note

   The construction is fixed: you attribute an effect to a cause, with the cause in the to-phrase. It very often appears in the passive (the delay was attributed to weather). Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749) plays with it, citing Butler, "who attributes inspiration to ale". The verb can credit a cause as easily as blame one. Impute and lay are near-synonyms.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   An object regarded as typical of a particular person or function, especially as an artistic convention.

   The scales held by the figure are an attribute of Justice.

   Medieval painters relied on familiar attributes to identify each saint.

   Similarsymbol, emblem

   Note

   Here the quality has become a thing you can paint. The eagle and the thunderbolt identify Jove, and the scales identify Justice. The object works as a label, so the viewer knows the figure without a caption. The construction is almost always attribute of plus the figure. Unlike the everyday "quality" meaning, this attribute sits beside the person rather than within them.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A word, such as an adjective, that qualifies or modifies a noun.

   In the phrase 'tall building,' 'tall' functions as an attribute.

   Some languages place attributes after the noun rather than before it.

   Similarqualifier

   Note

   A grammarian's term for a modifier that sits inside the noun phrase: in a narrow street, narrow is the attribute. In the street is narrow, the same adjective reaches the noun through a verb instead, and grammar keeps the two positions apart. Qualifier is the near-synonym. Note the contrast with the logician's attribute, which is precisely the predicated quality grammar sets aside.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   An option or setting that belongs to a particular object.

   The program reads each object's width attribute before drawing it.

   Developers set several attributes when they create a new user account.

   Similarproperty, setting, parameter

   Note

   In software, a named setting carried by an object or file. The verb that goes with it is set: a file with the read-only attribute set cannot be overwritten, and a packet can have an attribute set to zero. Programmers speak of these attributes as switched on, off or given a value. That separates this use from the code-decorating attribute, a marker attached to the code itself.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   A semantic marker that can be attached to a method or other code element.

   Developers decorate the class with an attribute that controls serialization.

   Several attributes on the method tell the compiler to skip certain checks.

   Similarannotation

   Note

   A programmer's word for metadata pinned to the code itself, such as a class, method or property, rather than a value an object holds. Marking a property obsolete with one makes the compiler warn anyone who uses it. The verb that goes with it is decorate, and the marked element can be called attributed: Peter Drayton, Ben Albahari and Ted Neward's C# in a Nutshell (2003) speaks of "the attributed method or class".

8. 8
   nouncountable

   Something that is predicated or affirmed of a subject; a quality held to belong to it.

   The philosopher argued that mercy is an attribute of a just ruler.

   Medieval thinkers debated which attributes could be affirmed of God.

   Similarproperty, quality, predicate

   Note

   Logic's attribute is whatever is affirmed of a subject, which makes it close kin to predicate. The older word accident points to the metaphysical side: a quality a thing can have or lack without ceasing to be what it is. Medieval arguments over which attributes could be affirmed of God belong to this sense. The word here names a claim about a subject as much as a feature of it.

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