Impute vs Devolve - What's the difference?
impute | devolve |
To reckon as pertaining or attributable; to charge; to ascribe; to attribute; to set to the account of; to charge to one as the author, responsible originator, or possessor; -- generally in a bad sense.
* 1751 , (Thomas Gray), , lines 37–40:
* 1856 February, , “(Oliver Goldsmith)” in the (eighth edition), volume and page numbers unknown:
* 1956–1960 , (second edition, 1960), chapter ii: “Motives and Motivation”, page 29:
(theology) To ascribe (sin or righteousness) (to) someone by substitution.
* 2009 , (Diarmaid MacCulloch), A History of Christianity , Penguin (2010), page 607:
To take account of; to consider; to regard.
* 1788 , (Edward Gibbon), (The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) VI, chapter lxiv, “A.D. 1355–1391: The Emperor John Palæologus; Discord of the Greeks”,
To attribute or credit to.
To attribute (responsibility or fault) to a cause or source.
(obsolete) To roll (something) down; to unroll.
* 1744 , (Mark Akenside), The Pleasures of the Imagination , II:
* 1830 , , Character :
To be inherited by someone else; to pass down (upon) the next person in a succession, especially through failure or loss of an earlier holder.
* 1932 , (Duff Cooper), Talleyrand , Folio Society 2010, p. 4:
To delegate (a responsibility, duty etc.) (on) or (upon) someone.
* 1704 , (Joseph Addison), Remarks on Several Parts of Italy :
* 1756 , (Edmund Burke), A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful :
To fall as a duty or responsibility (on) or (upon) someone.
* , Episode 16:
To degenerate; to break down.
As verbs the difference between impute and devolve
is that impute is while devolve is .impute
English
Verb
(imput)- 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.
- He was vain, sensual, frivolous, profuse, improvident. One vice of a darker shade was imputed to him, envy.
- We ascribe or impute motives to others and avow them or confess to them in ourselves.
- 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.
page 328:
- They ?erved with honour in the wars of Bajazet; but a plan of fortifying Con?tantinople excited his jealou?y: he threatened their lives; the new works were in?tantly demoli?hed; and we ?hall be?tow a prai?e, perhaps above the merit of Palæologus, if we impute this la?t humiliation as the cau?e of his death.
- We imputed this quotation to Shakespeare.
- People impute great cleverness to cats.
- The teacher imputed the student's failure to his nervousness.
Synonyms
* ascribe, assign, attribute, charge, reckon, consider, imply, insinuateReferences
* *Anagrams
* ----devolve
English
Verb
(en-verb)- every headlong stream / Devolves its winding waters to the main.
- He spake of virtue […] And with […] a lack-lustre dead-blue eye, Devolved his rounded periods.
- an accident […] rendered him permanently lame, and therefore unfitted him, in the opinion of his parents, to inherit his father's many titles, which, it was then arranged, should devolve upon his younger brother.
- They devolved their whole authority into the hands of the council of sixty.
- An artful man became popular, the people had power in their hands, and they devolved a considerable share of their power upon their favourite […].
- For the nonce he was rather nonplussed but inasmuch as the duty plainly devolved upon him to take some measures on the subject he pondered suitable ways and means during which Stephen repeatedly yawned.
- A discussion about politics may devolve into a shouting match.