English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
A co-worker frequently uses the phrase “X is most likely attributed to Y” and it feels wrong to me. I think you have to say “X is attributed to Y” and can’t qualify it with “most likely” or anything similar.
For example, I will write “vomiting is attributed to inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract.” However, writing “vomiting is most likely attributed to inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract” feels incorrect.
Am I off base here? Thanks!
What your co-worker is trying to say is that X is most frequently attributed to Y, or most likely to be attributed to Y. The statement is about the tendency of the authors, not the nature of X.
You can say that X is most likely a consequence of Y, which is about X and Y, and not about what writers tend to do.
Cambridge has:
Cambridge
Attribute, verb:
to say or think that something is the result of a particular thing:attribute something to something:
Her success can be attributed to three main factors
Hence we may say X is attributed to Y, meaning that people believe X results from Y. Where there is some doubt about the attribution, it seems reasonable to qualify such a definite statement by saying X is likely attributed to Y, meaning that there is a probability less than 100% that Y caused X.
For example, Ill health is likely attributed to poverty implies the possibility and probability that poverty contributes to ill health, but avoids the incorrect certainty of Ill health is attributed to poverty, a statement that ignores all the other causes of poverty.
Note that in legal usage, a more restrictive use of likely sometimes applies, meaning more likely than not, and therefore implying a probability of more than 50%.
Law Insider
Likely means more likely than not
