Word.ws English Dictionary

put down to

put down to verb: to ascribe; to assume to be the cause of a situation.

Verb

put down to (third-person singular simple present puts down to, present participle putting down to, simple past and past participle put down to)

  1. (idiomatic) To ascribe; to assume to be the cause of a situation.
    • I put the high crime rate down to the high unemployment.
    • Collins' death can be put down to his devil-may-care attitude—his decision to journey through hostile territory in a large convoy, the inadequate choice of the members of the convoy, and the tactics he adopted in the ambush. For all the debate about ballistics and entry and exit wounds, and the use...1988, Michael Hopkinson, Green Against Green: The Irish Civil War

Synonyms of put down to

Forms of put down to

third-person singular presentputs down to
present participleputting down to
past participleput down to
pastput down to

Questions about put down to

What does put down to mean?
Put down to means to ascribe; to assume to be the cause of a situation.
What part of speech is put down to?
Put down to is a verb.
What is the past tense of put down to?
The past tense of put down to is put down to.

Words near put down to in the dictionary

  1. put daylight between oneself and someone
  2. put down
  3. put down as
  4. put down for
  5. put down roots
  6. put down to
  7. put downs
  8. put facts on the ground
  9. put food on the table
  10. put foot to ass
  11. put forth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put down to (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-put down to.ogg.

Cite this entry: “put down to.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/put_down_to. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.