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Glite Dictionary
📝 To give a duty 📍 To set a role 🔗 To attribute 📄 To transfer rights 💻 To set in code
to assign

to assign

179 3.1
Decide the group, place, or role something belongs to in a system
  • verb
  • /əˈsaɪn/
: asignar
  • In addition, Pickens et al. assigned different roles to the members of a team.
  • randomly assigned
  • assigned to groups
  • assigned to a subgroup

You've, you've decided to assign to one sex.

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Examples

  • He was assigned a new role in the company to manage the marketing team.

  • -It's time to assign band buddies for the trip.

    Before I Change My Mind (2024)

  • You could ask me the name of the government investigator who was assigned the case.

    She Said (2022)

  • I thought he had a witness with him and then he introduced her as a data analyst assigned to the case.

    Los Angeles (2021)

  • We have a textbook and so I assign stories for them to read.

  • You've been assigned to rooms upstairs.

    Love Child (1982)

  • In the classes we observed, teachers assigned students to use a timeline as their graphic organizer.

    Academic text (2013)

  • Limitations of this study pertain to the teachers randomly assigned to the control condition.

    Academic text (2011)

  • The teacher will assign homework to all the students next week.

  • The project manager assigned specific tasks to each team member for the upcoming deadline.

Synonyms

to place
vsto assign
∞ 1.0

To put something in a particular position or job

is about deciding category or role rather than physical arrangement
to appoint
vsto assign
  • Formal
475 3.2

Officially choose someone for a job or role

is about specifying a role within a system without formal appointment
to designate
vsto assign
93 4.4

To give a name, often an official title, to someone or something

means deciding placement or category inside an organized system
to allocate
vsto assign
88 4.5

Give parts of something, like money or time, to people for a planned purpose

is about deciding categories or roles rather than distributing resources
to categorize
vsto assign
  • US
53 3.5

To put things or people into groups by what they have in common

focuses on specifying a position or role within a system
to put down as
vsto assign
8 4.3

To register someone for an activity or list and give them a specific role

is about deciding positions generally rather than recording them officially

Antonyms

to unclassify
1 7.6

To take something out of a category so it is no longer in that group

How Classified

to classify
108 3.4
to categorize
  • US
53 3.5
to assign
179 3.1
to place
∞ 1.0

Surface Forms

assign infinitive
assigned past
assigned past participle
assigning present participle
assigns third person singular

Morphology

assign = sign (semi-transparent) = as + sign

The morphological form is clear, but the sense 'to place or classify' is an extension of 'to mark/appoint' and may not be directly inferable by learners.

Etymology

Assign comes from Latin signare 'to mark' and is related to the everyday word sign, so assigning something to a place or category is like marking it as belonging to that place or group.