due to
- 1Caused by or resulting from a particular thing or event; because of.
Sales dropped sharply due to the sudden rise in fuel prices.
Due to a scheduling conflict, the meeting was moved to Friday afternoon.
Note
What follows the phrase is a cause, and where the phrase sits decides how safe it is. After a form of be it is unremarkable: The New York Times wrote in 1908 that an accident was due to a broken propeller blade. Directly after a noun it works the same way, as in damage due to reckless handling. Opening a sentence and standing in for because of, it is widely used, but some usage guides still reject it.
- 2Used to credit a mathematical result, theorem, or proof to the person who first produced it.
The elegant proof due to Euclid still appears in modern geometry textbooks.
Students learned the convergence test due to Cauchy in their analysis course.
Note
Mathematical writing uses the phrase to give credit, not to explain why something happened. In a proof due to Euclid, Euclid is the author and not a cause, unlike the causal meaning. The pattern is fixed: first comes the result being credited, such as a proof, a lemma or a test, then the phrase, then a person's name. Recognizing the pattern keeps a reader from looking for a cause that isn't there.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of due to apart? Answer 4 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.