About Teacher's Tutorial: Responsibility pg. 2 of 6 Prerequisite: Here's The American Heritage Dictionary definition and usage of responsible. Begin definition
Responsible:
1.
Liable to be required to give account, as of one's
actions or of the discharge of a duty or trust.
2.
Involving personal accountability or ability to act
without guidance or superior authority: a responsible
position within the company. 3. Being
a source or cause. 4. Able to make
moral or rational decisions on one's own and therefore
answerable for one's behavior.
5. Able to be trusted or depended
upon; reliable.
6.
Based on or characterized by good judgment or sound
thinking: responsible journalism. 7.
Having the means to pay debts or fulfill obligations.
8. Required to render account; answerable:
The cabinet is responsible to the parliament.
Usage: Some critics have maintained that
responsible should not be used to describe things,
since only persons can be held accountable. The
application to things is justifiable, however, when
responsible is used to mean "being the source or
cause of." In an earlier survey, a majority of
the Usage Panel accepted the sentence Faulty
construction was responsible for the crash. In
recent years, many people have objected to the use of
the phrase claim responsibility with
reference to the authors of terrorist acts, as in
A small separatist group claimed responsibility for
the explosion, in which 30 passengers were killed.
It is true that the phrase is not entirely felicitous,
inasmuch as it does not convey the speaker's
conviction that the action is deplorable. But
alternatives such as admit or take the blame
cannot be recommended either, since they would imply
misleadingly that the instigators had themselves
acknowledged that the action was wrongful. End of
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