Other forms: ascribed, ascribes, ascribing
To ascribe is to say that something was caused by or made by somebody. Ascribe it to luck, ascribed to Shakespeare, ascribe motives.
It always takes to and is the careful word in scholarship, where a work ascribed to somebody is not securely theirs. Ascribing motives to people is what arguments are usually about.
1verbascribeTo say that something was caused by or made by somebody.
“He ascribed his long life to walking every day and never smoking.”
ascribe is an attributing.
Latin ascribere means to write in or add in writing, from ad plus scribere, to write.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)kreybʰ-
Latin
ascribo — to state in writing
Old French
ascrivre — inscribe, attribute, impute
Middle English
ascriben
English, today
ascribe
From Middle English ascriben, from Old French ascrivre (“inscribe, attribute, impute”), from Latin ascribo (“to state in writing”), equivalent to a- + scribe.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA