What does it mean to attribute something?

something used as a symbol of a particular person, office, or status: A scepter is one of the attributes of a king. 7. Grammar. a word or phrase that is syntactically subordinate to another and serves to limit, identify, particularize, describe, or supplement the meaning of the form with which it is in construction. read more

something used as a symbol of a particular person, office, or status: A scepter is one of the attributes of a king. Grammar. a word or phrase that is syntactically subordinate to another and serves to limit, identify, particularize, describe, or supplement the meaning of the form with which it is in construction. read more

ascribe, attribute, assign, impute, credit mean to lay something to the account of a person or thing. ascribe suggests an inferring or conjecturing of cause, quality, authorship. forged paintings formerly ascribed to masters; attribute suggests less tentativeness than ascribe, less definiteness than assign. read more

For clarity, attributes should more correctly be considered metadata. An attribute is frequently and generally a property of a property. However, in actual usage, the term attribute can and is often treated as equivalent to a property depending on the technology being discussed. read more