attribute
Developers often attribute attribute changes to specific commits.
The sentence states that developers frequently assign changes in attributes to particular code commits.
Meanings
to regard something as caused by or belonging to someone or something
- Historians attribute the victory to careful logistics.
- She attributed her success to mentorship and hard work.
a quality or feature regarded as characteristic of someone or something
- Patience is an attribute of good teachers.
- Each playing card has two attributes: suit and rank.
Word origin
From Latin attribuere ('to assign, allot'), formed from ad- ('to') + tribuere ('to assign, give'). The same Latin root produces 'tribute', 'tribe', and 'distribute'. The English verb-noun stress alternation (end-stress for verb, front-stress for noun) follows the trochaic noun rule.
Fun fact
In computer science and HTML, 'attribute' (the noun) refers to a named property of an element — like the 'href' attribute of a link. The convention of the noun pronunciation persists even when programmers use it as a verb informally, as in 'we'll attribute this value to the element'.