MEANING
1. To assign a work, statement or action to the wrong person or source.
2. To identify the wrong cause of an event, behavior, feeling or observed feature.
Use it for
correcting a quotation’s supposed author; identifying mistaken credit for a work; distinguishing the source of an idea from later repetition; checking the origin assigned to a documentSeparates assigning the wrong origin from identifying the wrong cause. Writing functions: Causation / Relationships.
Words that belong together
- misattribute a quotation
- misattribute a painting
- misattribute a statement
On the page
The catalog misattributed the unsigned painting to the artist’s brother.
Repeated citation had misattributed the remark to a speaker who had only quoted it.
The initial report misattributed the decline to pricing before the distribution failure was discovered.
Observers may misattribute silence to agreement when the setting discourages objections.
Word forms
- Base
- misattribute
- Past tense
- misattributed
- Past participle
- misattributed
- Present participle
- misattributing
Full tense & aspect guide
- Present
- misattribute
- Present continuous
- am/is/are misattributing
- Present perfect
- have/has misattributed
- Present perfect continuous
- have/has been misattributing
- Past
- misattributed
- Past continuous
- was/were misattributing
- Past perfect
- had misattributed
- Past perfect continuous
- had been misattributing
- Future
- will misattribute
- Future continuous
- will be misattributing
- Future perfect
- will have misattributed
- Future perfect continuous
- will have been misattributing
Choose the auxiliary that agrees with your subject. These are constructions of one word, not separate entries.
Usage notes
Transitive: misattribute, misattributes, misattributed, misattributed, misattributing; future will misattribute. Pattern: misattribute something to someone or something. Register: formal. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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