attribution.

The assignment of a cause, authorship, responsibility or quality to a person, source or event.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• causal attribution
• attribution of authorship

On the page

Causal attribution required evidence beyond the sequence of the events.

The attribution of authorship changed when the earlier manuscript was identified.

Usage notes

Primary category: academic / formal. Forms: Singular attribution; plural attributions. Also uncountable. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings. Established modern English lexical item. No separate regional spelling or grammatical inflection entry. Writing functions: responsibility analysis, evidence qualification, ethical distinction, institutional judgment. Disciplines: academic writing, ethics, legal-administrative reasoning. Commonness: moderately common.