"ascribe to" = "subscribe to"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Sun Sep 3 01:04:30 UTC 2006


At 4:36 PM -0700 9/2/06, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>This has got to be a wave of the future, with
>over 30,000 raw Googlits for "ascribe/s to the
>idea/ belief."  Usenet has it back to the
>mid-90s.
>
>   Here's one at Ph.D. level.  The writer, who
>shall be nameless here, is Assistant Professor
>of English at Marshall College:

who put himself through grad school by selling magazine ascriptions.

LH

>
>   a2001, in Philip K. Jason & Mark A. Graves,
>eds. _Encyclopedia of American War Literature_
>(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001) 153:
>Heinemann's narrators are war-savvy combatants
>who ascribe to the Puritan beliefs of fate and
>destiny.
>
>   ("Beliefs of fate and destiny" is good too, but not as good.)
>
>   JL
>
>
>
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