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# blame

«blame» in Mova's school dictionary: **to say or think that they caused something bad** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

verb (blame, blames, blamed, blaming); noun (blame, uncountable)

### meaning for a pupil

1) To blame someone means to say or think that they caused something bad. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/blame/#m1)

2) The blame is the responsibility for something bad that happened. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/blame/#m2)

3) «To be to blame» means to be the one who caused it. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/blame/#m3)

### sense in the lessons

In stories and in lessons about friendship and honesty, blaming shows who is held responsible; blaming someone else for your own mistake is unfair and a kind of lie. In science, to find what is «to blame» for a result means to find its cause. Phrases: blame someone for something, take the blame, put the blame on, don't blame me, be to blame.

### examples

- Don't blame your sister; you broke the vase. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/blame/#x1)
- He blamed the dog for eating his homework. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/blame/#x2)
- Who is to blame for this mess? [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/blame/#x3)
- She took the blame even though it wasn't her fault. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/blame/#x4)
- The storm was to blame for the fallen tree. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/blame/#x5)
- I don't blame you for being upset. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/blame/#x6)
- It's not fair to blame someone without checking first. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/blame/#x7)
- They put the blame on the new boy. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/blame/#x8)

### note

Pattern: blame someone FOR something («blamed him for the mess») or blame something ON someone («blamed the mess on him»). «Blame» as a noun is uncountable: no «a blame». Owning up honestly is usually better than letting someone else take the blame.

### In the corpora

- [When something bad happens to someone, like a burglary, blame the person who did it, not the person it happened to.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/43-our-street-when-a-guess-becomes-a-reputation/17/)
- [The rabbits only blamed each other once it was too late: «How stupid you are!](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/25-willows-ch1-part1-the-mole-meets-the-river/19/)
- [The Rat: «You know I shouldn't like you to blame me afterwards and say I had forgotten anything!»](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/70-willows-ch12-part1-the-secret-passage-at-night/22/)
- ["A senior moment" is a joking name for a moment of forgetting, blamed on getting old.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/9-age-looks-and-size/7/)
- ["Lessons have been learned" (official) means we failed and we were blamed.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/34-failure-and-mistakes/15/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «blame» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/blame/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.