account for (something)

phrasal verb

accounted for (something); accounting for (something); accounts for (something)

1

: to give a reason or explanation for (something)

How do you account for your success?

2

: to be the cause of (something)

These new features account for the computer's higher price.

3

: to make up or form (a part of something)

Women account for only 25 percent of our employees.

4

US : to think about (something) before doing something : to take (something) into consideration

The researchers failed to account for the fact that most of the students were poor.

Examples of account for (something) in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

And the researchers sought to conduct this work in a way that would account for every wiggle in the trove of seismic data, a laborious process. —Meghan Bartels, Scientific American, 17 Apr. 2025

The federal funding Harvard receives goes to everything from student aid to research, but Harvard does much more research than the federal dollars account for. —Kinsey Crowley, USA Today, 16 Apr. 2025

The program's website says the filing tool will be open until October 15 for people who obtained deadline extensions, but it hasn't been updated to account for the plan to end Direct File. —ArsTechnica, 16 Apr. 2025

Tuesday’s study indicated that PJM has had 64 energy projects, which together account for 5 gigawatts of production, in its queue since 2020 or earlier. —Christine Condon, Baltimore Sun, 16 Apr. 2025