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

to assign

89 3.1
Decide the group, place, or role something belongs to in a system
  • verb
  • /əˈsaɪn/
translation icon : 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
580 3.2

Officially choose someone for a job or role

is about specifying a role within a system without formal appointment
to allocate
vsto assign
92 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 designate
vsto assign
77 4.4

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

means deciding placement or category inside an organized system
to categorize
vsto assign
  • US
59 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
5 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
110 3.4
to categorize
  • US
59 3.5
to assign
89 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.