ETYM Latin attributum.
An abstraction belonging to or characteristic of an entity.

To ascribe; to consider (something) as due or appropriate (to); to impute to someone.

In archeology, a characteristic element of a particular culture or group; or a specific element of an individual artifact, such as the rim of a pot or the base of a projectile point, or a type of decoration, raw material, or color.

A component of a structured type or relation.
1. In a database record, the name or structure of a field. For example, the files LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME, and PHONE would be attributes of each record in a PHONELIST database. The size of a field or the type of information it contains would also be attributes of a database record.
2. In screen displays, an element of additional information stored with each character in the video buffer of a video adapter running in character mode. Such attributes control the background and foreground colors of the character, underlining, and blinking.
3. In markup languages such as SGML and HTML, a name-value pair within a tagged element that modifies certain features of that element. See also HTML, SGML.