account for
phr. v..phr. v.. to explain the reason for something or to be the cause of a specific amount.
phr. v.. to provide an explanation or justification for a situation; also used to denote the proportion or percentage of a total that a specific part represents.
The bad weather accounts for the delay.
Small businesses account for more than half of the new jobs created in this city.
The CFO was asked to account for the discrepancy between the projected earnings and the actual quarterly revenue.
usually followed by a noun phrase representing a cause, a reason, or a numerical value.
distinguish between the 'explain' sense and the 'percentage' sense; the latter is very common in academic writing and data description tasks.
The rain accounts the accident.The rain accounts for the accident.the preposition 'for' is mandatory to link the verb to the cause or reason.