impute

im·pute | \ im-ˈpyüt

imputed; imputing

Definition of impute

1 : to lay the responsibility or blame for (something) often falsely or unjustly The economic sins imputed to Tito had all been committed to a greater extent by the communist parties of neighbouring countries.— Hugh Seton-Watson

2 : to credit or ascribe (something) to a person or a cause : attribute our vices as well as our virtues have been imputed to bodily derangement— B. N. Cardozo

Other Words from impute Synonyms Choose the Right Synonym Put the Valuable Impute Into Your Vocabulary More Example Sentences Learn More about impute

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Choose the Right Synonym for impute

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. attributed to Rembrandt but possibly done by an associate assign implies ascribing with certainty or after deliberation. assigned the bones to the Cretaceous period impute suggests ascribing something that brings discredit by way of accusation or blame. tried to impute sinister motives to my actions credit implies ascribing a thing or especially an action to a person or other thing as its agent, source, or explanation. credited his teammates for his success

Put the Valuable Impute Into Your Vocabulary

Impute is a somewhat formal word that is used to suggest that someone or something has done or is guilty of something. It is similar in meaning to such words as ascribe and attribute, though it is more likely to suggest an association with something that brings discredit. When we impute something, we typically impute it to someone or something. You may also encounter the related noun imputation, which appears in such contexts as "I deny all your imputations of blame." Another sense of impute means "to calculate as a value or cost (as for taxation)," as in "impute a benefit from the use of the car."

Examples of impute in a Sentence

people often impute his silence to unfriendliness and not to the shyness it really represents

Recent Examples on the Web The same petrifying dreadfulness marks those intermittent engravings which impute monstrousness—embodied by eruptive owls or witches—to the dreaming states of the putatively rational. — Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, "Goya and the Art of Survival," 14 Sep. 2020 The worst of religious conservatism is on cable news imputing to Trump an almost-Constantinian prestige, uniting nationalist fervor with religious revivalism. — Andrew T. Walker, National Review, "Understanding Why Religious Conservatives Would Vote for Trump," 10 Feb. 2020 Vote intentions were imputed onto voter file records in Iowa and then aggregated statewide and by district. — CBS News, "CBS News Battleground Tracker: What could happen in Iowa on Monday?," 3 Feb. 2020 The analysis imputes usual hours when unavailable or varying, and adjusts weekly earnings for top-coding using a log-linear distributional assumption. — Ernie Tedeschi, New York Times, "Pay Is Rising Fastest for Low Earners. One Reason? Minimum Wages.," 3 Jan. 2020 The most significant development was also the most question-begging: the impulse to impute significance to rat kings and therefore to report on them, draw attention to them, and preserve them. — Adrian Daub, Longreads, "All Hail the Rat King," 13 Dec. 2019 Left to their own devices, investors start to impute greater significance to key thresholds. — The Economist, "How yuan-dollar became the world’s most closely watched asset price," 8 Aug. 2019 The consumption and income data available in the U.S. are both subject to error, but the consumption data provide more information than income data to impute noncash housing benefits and the service flow from vehicle and home ownership. — Dylan Matthews, Vox, "How many Americans live on $2 a day? The biggest debate in poverty research, explained.," 5 June 2019 Stated differently, by criticizing an entire program, the NCAA allegedly imputed wrongful acts on members of the program who were innocent. — Michael Mccann, SI.com, "Should the NCAA Be Worried About the Lawsuit It's Facing From Former Louisville Players?," 12 July 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'impute.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.