to reattribute
- verb
- /ˌriːəˈtrɪbjuːt/
- After reviewing the evidence, the investigators decided to reattribute the discovery to a different team of scientists.
Examples
-
Or were the contents of Gurley's box gone through and itemized two months later—in the process being reattributed to his successor?
Academic text (1999) -
Anacreontic verse was "written out" of history after the majority of the odes formerly attributed to Anacreon were reattributed to later, inferior Greek writers.
Academic text (2016) -
Bill Brown is close to the mark when he writes that Fried's work "depends on a logic of reattributing crisis from the site of the body to the scene of writing" (396);
Academic text (2000) -
The historian had to reattribute several famous paintings after new evidence emerged linking them to another artist.
-
Once the new documents were found, the researchers were able to reattribute the historical events to a different cause.
Synonyms
To say that something comes from a person or thing
Think that something is caused by a person or thing
Say that a person or cause made something
To blame a person or thing for something bad, often without proof
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Reattribute combines the prefix re- meaning 'again' and the familiar word attribute, which means 'to give credit' or 'to say who something belongs to'. So, to reattribute something is to 'give credit again', often to a different person or source than before.