to chalk up to
30
5.5
- phrasal verb
- /tʃɔk ʌp tu/
- Informal
:
atribuir a
- We'll just chalk it up to one of Blackwater's charming eccentricities.
Her incompetence will be chalked up to the fact that she is female.
- Her incompetence will be chalked up to the fact that she is female.
- It's obvious you can chalk up his behavior to mental illness and just anger and rage.
- I'd taken out the well the first two I could chalk up to, you know, these damn gnomes.
- Yeah, it's a it's a I think that that gets chalked up to a lack of fulfillment.
- I don't know how some people just raw dog their nutrition and just chalk it up to Gideon.
- And again, it's I think just chalking it up to, to hard work, not being afraid of hard work.
- And then they're like someone complained about a smile and they're like, chalked it up to the the sewer pipes.
- And so where do we chalk it up to the ones that those of us like me that make it out?
Examples
-
You can chalk it up to a recent personal tragedy.
-
I think we can chalk all of this up to one thing.
-
So for me, I think it's about chalking it up to experience.
-
Let's chalk it up to experience, okay?
-
Just chalk it up to a business expense, and we'll move forward.
-
Perhaps we can chalk this up to the indiscretions of youth.
-
We'll just chalk it up to a compliment... and move on.
-
The kiss and the whisper surprised him, but he chalked it up to holiday spirit.
Fiction book (1993) -
And a lot of that I chalk up to being the youngest in a group of four boys all vying for attention.
-
Let's chalk up to our lack of preparation for the unexpected delays.
Synonyms
35
6.8
Think that something is caused by a person or thing
6
4.8
To say that something happened because of a particular reason
How Certain
Surface Forms
Morphology
chalk + up + to
The causative meaning 'to consider something caused by' is only partially recoverable from the parts: 'chalk' (to mark or score) can metaphorically imply 'credit/record' and 'up to' frames the target, but this figurative extension is not a straightforward compositional inference from the literal words. Because the attributive sense depends on a metaphorical transfer (crediting/recording) rather than transparent composition, a B1 learner who only knows the constituent words is unlikely to predict the meaning without exposure.
Etymology
The phrasal verb chalk up to may come from the old habit of using chalk to mark points on a board and write them up next to a player's name as their score. So to chalk something up to a reason is like adding that reason on the board, which is why the phrase means 'to consider something caused by'.