as·sign

(ə-sīn′)

tr.v. as·signed, as·sign·ing, as·signs

1. To select for a duty or office; appoint: firefighters assigned to the city's industrial park. See Synonyms at appoint.

2. To set apart for a particular purpose or place in a particular category; designate: assigned the new species to an existing genus. See Synonyms at allocate.

3. To give out as a task; allot: assigned homework to the class.

4. To ascribe; attribute: assigned blame for the loss to a lack of good defense. See Synonyms at attribute.

5. To match or pair with: assign a value to each of the variables.

6. Law To transfer (property, rights, or interests) from one to another.

n. Law

An assignee.

[Middle English assignen, from Old French assigner, from Latin assignāre : ad-, ad- + signāre, to mark (from signum, sign; see sek^w- in Indo-European roots).]

as·sign′a·bil′i·ty n.

as·sign′a·ble adj.

as·sign′a·bly adv.

as·sign′er n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Adj.

assignable - legally transferable to the ownership of another; "negotiable bonds"

conveyable, transferable, transferrable, negotiable

alienable - transferable to another owner

Translations

assignable

adj

(= ascribable) → bestimmbar

cause → anführbar

(Jur) → übertragbar

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

"If you tell me that, so far as you know, your husband capriciously struck you out of his will, without assignable reason or motive for doing so, and without other obvious explanation of his conduct than that he acted in this matter entirely under the influence of Mrs.

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There were local tales of his having exerted his powers of prognosis, or perhaps you would say diagnosis; and it was said that in every instance the person whose friends he had warned had died suddenly at the appointed time, and from no assignable cause.

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Without the slightest assignable reason, however, his just expectations were disappointed.

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In England alone, the incomprehensible and discourteous custom prevails of keeping the host and the dinner waiting for half an hour or more--without any assignable reason and without any better excuse than the purely formal apology that is implied in the words, "Sorry to be late."

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And now I had awakened, without any assignable cause, hours before my usual time.

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The date, I may thus say, in regard to the remoteness of its antiquity, cannot be less than any assignable quantity whatsoever.

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'It's easily done,' replied he, with a faint smile bordering on a sneer: 'to abuse your friend and knock him on the head without any assignable cause, and then tell him the deed was not quite correct, but it's no matter whether he pardons it or not.'

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Catherick, would express itself in petty malice rather than not express itself at all) appeared to me to be the only assignable cause for the peculiar insolence of her reference to Mrs.

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There were sentries posted to keep the ground for the troops, and servants on the batteries keeping places for the ladies, and sergeants running to and fro, with vellum-covered books under their arms, and Colonel Bulder, in full military uniform, on horseback, galloping first to one place and then to another, and backing his horse among the people, and prancing, and curvetting, and shouting in a most alarming manner, and making himself very hoarse in the voice, and very red in the face, without any assignable cause or reason whatever.

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There was, at least, an assignable motive for the first stipulation; there appeared to be none whatever for the last.

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The purity of the Patagonian salt, or absence from it of those other saline bodies found in all sea-water, is the only assignable cause for this inferiority: a conclusion which no one, I think, would have suspected, but which is supported by the fact lately ascertained, [3] that those salts answer best for preserving cheese which contain most of the deliquescent chlorides.

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The sentiment is probably assignable to the deep and aged roots which my family has stuck into the soil.

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