Dictionary

impute en · VERB

Pronunciation

• /ɪmˈpjuːt/ (Received-Pronunciation)
• /ɪmˈpjʉːt/ (Australia)
• /əmˈpjʉːt/ (New-Zealand)
• /ɪmˈpjut/ (Canada, General-American)
• (US) audio

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French imputer, from Latin imputō (“to bring into the reckoning, charge, impute”).

Meanings

1. (transitive) To attribute or ascribe (responsibility or fault) to a cause or source.
   • We ascribe or impute motives to others and avow them or confess to them in ourselves. 1956–1960, Richard Stanley Peters, “2: Motives and Motivation”, in The Concept of Motivation, Routledge & Kegan Paul (second edition, 1960), page 29:
   • He was vain, sensual, frivolous, profuse, improvident. One vice of a darker shade was imputed to him, envy. 1856 February, Thomas Babington Macaulay, “"Oliver Goldsmith"”, in Encyclopædia Britannica, 8th edition, volume and page numbers unknown:
   • The teacher imputed the student's failure to his nervousness.
   • I impute my improvement more to the kind attentions of Lord Allerton, who is my companion still, and will not, I think, leave me, than to the sea air. 1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter XXXIV, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 141:
   • Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, / If mem’ry o’er their tomb no trophies raise, / Where thro’ the long-drawn isle and fretted vault, / The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. 1751, Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, lines 37–40:
2. (transitive) To ascribe (sin or righteousness) to someone by substitution.
   • To use the technical language of theologians, God through his grace "imputes" the merits of the crucified and risen Christ to a fallen human being who remains without inherent merit, and who without this "imputation" would not be "made" righteous at all. 2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin (2010), page 607:
3. (transitive) To take into account.
   • They ſerved with honour in the wars of Bajazet; but a plan of fortifying Conſtantinople excited his jealouſy: he threatened their lives; the new works were inſtantly demoliſhed; and we ſhall beſtow a praiſe, perhaps above the merit of Palæologus, if we impute this laſt humiliation as the cauſe of his death. 1788, Edward Gibbon, “Chapter 64: A.D. 1355–1391: The Emperor John Palæologus; Discord of the Greeks”, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume 6, page 328:
4. (transitive) To attribute, ascribe, blame, or credit to.
   • In any case, the practices imputed to Shakespeare as an emergent dramatist were not in the least exceptional. 2014, Janet Clare, Shakespeare's Stage Traffic, page 11:
   • People impute great cleverness to cats.
5. (transitive) To replace missing data with substituted values.
   • remove observed values and impute 2012, Stef van Buuren, Flexible Imputation of Missing Data, page 263:
   • We will use a logistic regression model to impute values of nominal and ordinal variables and a linear regression model to impute values of continuous variables. 2010, Mamdouh Refaat, Data Preparation for Data Mining Using SAS, Elsevier, →ISBN, page 184:

Forms

Deriveds

imputableness · imputative · imputation · imputable · imputability · misimpute · imputed · imputably

Synonyms

put down to · repose · charge · insinuate · consider · impute · attribute · chalk up to · reckon · lay · assign · ascribe · attribute · draw · imply · attribute · ascribe · allege · attach · charge · accredit · regard

Translations (49)

de unterstellen (to attribute or credit to) · de betrachten (to take account of; regard) · ko 돌리다 (to ascribe sin or righteousness) · de zuschreiben (to attribute or credit to) · de anrechnen (to ascribe sin or righteousness) · sv tillskriva (to attribute to a cause or source) · de erwägen (to take account of; regard) · fr imputer (to ascribe sin or righteousness) · de zuschreiben (to attribute to a cause or source) · bg приписвам (to ascribe sin or righteousness) · ja 転嫁する (to ascribe sin or righteousness) · de einkalkulieren (to take account of; regard) · cs připisovat (to attribute to a cause or source) · pt imputar (to attribute to a cause or source) · pl przypisać (to ascribe sin or righteousness) · fr imputer (to attribute to a cause or source) · bg приписвам (to attribute to a cause or source) · pl przypisać (to attribute to a cause or source) · sv tillskriva (to ascribe sin or righteousness) · ru припи́сывать (to ascribe sin or righteousness) · es imputar (to attribute to a cause or source) · pt imputar (to ascribe sin or righteousness) · ru вменять (to attribute to a cause or source) · ro imputa (to attribute to a cause or source) · it imputare (to attribute to a cause or source) · it imputare (to ascribe sin or righteousness) · ru припи́сывать (to attribute or credit to) · de einbeziehen (to take account of; regard) · pl przypisać (to attribute or credit to) · bg отдавам (to attribute to a cause or source) · it imputare (to attribute or credit to) · cs přisuzovat (to attribute or credit to) · bg отчитам (to take account of; regard) · de zurechnen (to ascribe sin or righteousness) · ro imputa (to attribute or credit to) · de einberechnen (to take account of; regard) · ko 돌리다 (to attribute to a cause or source) · cs přisuzovat (to attribute to a cause or source) · uk приписувати (to attribute to a cause or source) · pt imputar (to attribute or credit to) · mi whakatuaki (to attribute to a cause or source) · de in Betracht ziehen (to take account of; regard) · pl imputować (to attribute to a cause or source) · ko 돌리다 (to attribute or credit to) · bg приписвам (to attribute or credit to) · cs přičítat (to attribute to a cause or source) · ja 転嫁する (to attribute or credit to) · ro imputa (to ascribe sin or righteousness) · mi whakairi (to attribute to a cause or source)