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Signature vs Attestation - What's the difference?

signature | attestation |

As nouns the difference between signature and attestation

is that signature is a person’s name, written by that person, used to signify approval of accompanying material, such as a legal contract while attestation is a thing that serves to bear witness, confirm, authenticate, validation, verification, documentation.

As an adjective signature

is distinctive, characteristic indicative of identity.

signature

English

(wikipedia signature)

Noun

(en noun)
  • A ’s name, written by that person, used to signify approval of accompanying material, such as a legal contract.
  • *
  • *:Thus, when he drew up instructions in lawyer languageunderstood him very well. If he had written a love letter, or a farce, or a ballade , or a story, no one, either clerks, or friends, or compositors, would have understood anything but a word here and a word there. For his signature , however, that was different.
  • The act of signing one's name.
  • (lb) That part of a doctor’s prescription containing directions for the patient.
  • (lb) Signs on the stave indicating key and tempo
  • (lb) A group of four (or a multiple of four) pages printed such that, when folded, become a section of a book
  • (lb) A pattern used for matching the identity of a virus, the parameter types of a method, etc.
  • (lb) Data attached to a message that guarantees that the message originated from its claimed source.
  • A mark or sign of implication.
  • *(Richard Bentley) (1662-1742)
  • *:the natural and indelible signature of God, which human souls in their first origin are supposed to be stamped with
  • *1997 : Chris Horrocks, Introducing Foucault'', page 67, ''The Renaissance Episteme (Totem Books, Icon Books; ISBN 1840460865)
  • *:A “signature'” was placed on all things by God to indicate their affinities — but it was hidden, hence the search for arcane knowledge. Knowing was '''guessing''' and ' interpreting , not observing or demonstrating.
  • (lb) A
  • A resemblance between the external character of a disease and those of some physical agent, for instance, that existing between the red skin of scarlet fever and a red cloth; supposed to indicate this agent in the treatment of the disease.

    • See also

    * autograph

    Adjective

    (en-adj) (unusually not comparable)
  • distinctive, characteristic indicative of identity
  • * 2001 , Lawrence J. Vale, Sam Bass Warner, Imaging the city: continuing struggles and new directions
    • Consider Las Fallas'' of Valencia, Spain, arguably the most signature''' of ' signature ephemera.
  • * 2005 , Paul Duchscherer, Linda Svendsen, Beyond the bungalow: grand homes in the arts & crafts tradition
    • Considered the most signature effect of the Tudor Revival style, half-timbering derived its distinctive ...
  • * 2005 , Brett Dawson, Tales from the 2004-05 Fighting Illini
    • But it was perhaps the most signature shot Williams ever made in an Illinois uniform, a bullying basket in which he used his power to pound Stoudamire, ...
    Rabbit in mustard sauce is my signature dish.
  • * 2005:' CBS News website, ''Paul Winchell Dead At Age 82'', read at on 14 May 2006 - The inspiration for [[w:Tigger, Tigger]’s ' signature phrase: TTFN, ta-ta for now.
    • The signature route of the airline is its daily flight between Buenos Aires and Madrid.
    ----

    attestation

    English

    Noun

    (Attested language) (en noun)
  • A thing that serves to bear witness, confirm, authenticate, validation, verification, documentation.
  • A confirmation or authentication.
  • (business, finance) The process, performed by accountants or auditors, of providing independent opinion on published financial and other business information of a business, public agency, or other organization.
  • (linguistics, of a language or word) An appearance in print or otherwise recorded on a permanent medium.
  • * 1997 , Roger Lass, Historical Linguistics and Language Change , page 23,
    • So something must have been developing over long periods empty of attestation ; and whatever it was, it must (by principles to be discussed in the next section) have been a language of the usual kind.
  • * 2009 , Ingo Plag, Maria Braun, Sabine Lappe, Mareile Schramm, Introduction to English Linguistics , page 110,
    • For each word, the date of its first attestation in the English language, as documented in the Oxford English Dictionary'', and its frequency of occurrence in the ''British National Corpus are given.
  • * 2010 , Kathryn Allan, Tracing metonymic polysemy through time: MATERIAL FOR OBJECT mappings in the OED'', Margaret E. Winters, Heli Tissari, Kathryn Allan (editors), ''Historical Cognitive Linguistics , page 176,
    • Furthermore, the first attestations' given in the ''OED'' are not always the earliest '''attestations''' in print; since the first edition was finished in 1928, many earlier and later examples have been identified, and these will be incorporated into the third edition, currently underway (see Durkin 2002 for a discussion of how much this is likely to change the dates of '''attestation in the ''OED as a whole).