attribute

v. to say that a particular person wrote something or that a specific cause made something happen.

v. to ascribe a work, remark, or event to a particular author, cause, or source. Transitive; typically takes the preposition 'to'.

“The museum experts attribute the unsigned painting to a famous Italian artist.”

“Climate scientists attribute the recent increase in extreme weather events to the long-term warming of the oceans.”

Academic

n. a quality or characteristic that someone or something has.

n. a quality or feature regarded as a characteristic or inherent part of someone or something.

“Patience is an essential attribute for anyone working as a primary school teacher.”

“The candidate's most impressive attribute is her ability to remain calm and analytical under intense public scrutiny.”

Academic · Formal

n. a piece of information that describes a file or a part of a computer program.

n. a specification that defines a property of an object, element, or file in computing and markup languages.

“You can change the file attribute to 'read-only' so that nobody can edit it.”

“The developer added a new attribute to the HTML tag to ensure the image would scale correctly on mobile devices.”

Technical

n. a word, like an adjective, that describes a noun.

n. a word or phrase that modifies a noun, typically placed immediately before or after it.

“In the phrase 'the red car', the word 'red' is an attribute of the car.”

“The linguist analysed how the poet used cumulative attributes to build a vivid sense of place without using a single main verb.”

Technical · Formal