Definition

1. Verb:
   • To attribute (responsibility, fault, or a quality) to a person or cause: To assign something, often something negative like blame or a mistake, or sometimes a positive quality, as being caused by or originating from a specific source.
   • To credit or ascribe something to someone or something: To regard a characteristic, action, or work as belonging to or being produced by a particular person or thing.

Usage and Examples

• Attributing responsibility or fault:

  • The report imputed the economic crisis to poor government policies. (The report attributed the cause of the economic crisis to poor government policies.)
  • She refused to impute malicious intent to his honest mistake. (She refused to assign malicious intent as the source of his honest mistake.)

• Crediting or ascribing a quality:

  • Historians impute the invention of the printing press to Gutenberg. (Historians credit the invention of the printing press to Gutenberg.)
  • We should not impute motives to people without evidence. (We should not ascribe specific motives to people without evidence.)

Advanced Usage and Nuances

• Legal and Formal Context: "Impute" is often used in formal, academic, or legal writing. It carries a sense of formal assignment of cause or origin.
  • The court can impute income to a parent for child support calculations. (The court can formally assign/attribute income to a parent for the purpose of calculation.)
• Often used with "to": The structure is typically "impute [something] to [someone/something]".
• Connotation: While it can be neutral, it frequently carries a slightly negative connotation when used with blame, fault, or error. When used with positive qualities like cleverness, it is neutral.

Variants and Related Words

• Imputation (noun): The act of imputing or the thing that is imputed.
  • The imputation of guilt damaged his reputation.
• Imputable (adjective): Capable of being imputed; attributable.
  • The success was imputable to the team's hard work.

Synonyms

• Attribute: To regard something as being caused by. (Often more general/neutral.)
• Ascribe: To credit or assign, as to a cause or source. (Very similar, slightly more literary.)
• Assign: To designate as belonging to or resulting from. (Broader in application.)
• Credit (with positive things): To give acknowledgment or recognition for.

Antonyms

• Absolve: To declare free from blame or guilt.
• Disassociate: To disconnect or separate from.
• Disavow: To deny responsibility for or connection with.

Related Phrases and Constructions

• Impute to: The standard prepositional phrase used with this verb.
  • You cannot impute your own failures to others.
• Imputed knowledge (Legal term): Knowledge that the law considers a person to have, whether they actually do or not.
  • The principal had imputed knowledge of the agent's actions.

Verb

1. attribute (responsibility or fault) to a cause or source
   • The teacher imputed the student's failure to his nervousness
2. attribute or credit to
   • We attributed this quotation to Shakespeare
   • People impute great cleverness to cats