impute
verb
transitive verb
Hugh Seton-Watson B. N. Cardozo 
Did you know?
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."
Synonyms
- accredit
- ascribe
- attribute
- chalk up
- credit
- lay
- put down
Example Sentences
Andrea Tinianow, Forbes, 7 May 2021 Once those videoconference recordings are handed over, whoever combs through them will have a great opportunity to look for comments that sound bad, admissions, and statements that might be used to impute bad motivations. Joshua Stein, Forbes, 21 Apr. 2021 If Trump voters are more likely to hang up on pollsters, then how should a forecast impute the preferences of non-respondents? Aditya Kotak, Quartz, 12 Nov. 2020 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, 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, 10 Feb. 2020 Vote intentions were imputed onto voter file records in Iowa and then aggregated statewide and by district. CBS News, 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, 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, 13 Dec. 2019 See More Word History
Middle English, from Anglo-French imputer, from Latin imputare, from in- + putare to consider
14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1
Legal Definition
impute
transitive verb
impute
verb
Synonyms & Similar Words
- ascribe
- attribute
- credit
- blame
- accredit
- chalk up
- refer
- lay
- assign
- put down
- attach
- link
- connect
- impute (to)
- associate
- charge
- pin (on)
- father (on)
Synonym Chooser
Some common synonyms of impute are ascribe, assign, attribute, and credit. While all these words mean "to lay something to the account of a person or thing," impute suggests ascribing something that brings discredit by way of accusation or blame.
The synonyms ascribe and impute are sometimes interchangeable, but ascribe suggests an inferring or conjecturing of cause, quality, authorship.
The meanings of assign and impute largely overlap; however, assign implies ascribing with certainty or after deliberation.
Attribute suggests less tentativeness than ascribe, less definiteness than assign.
The words credit and impute are synonyms, but do differ in nuance. Specifically, credit implies ascribing a thing or especially an action to a person or other thing as its agent, source, or explanation.