PREDICATE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Predicate

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/prˈɛdəkˌeɪt/ /prˈɛdɪkət/ Listen

noun

Predicate n.

(Logic) That which is affirmed or denied of the subject. In these propositions, "Paper is white," "Ink is not white," whiteness is the predicate affirmed of paper and denied of ink.

(Gram.) The word or words in a proposition which express what is affirmed of the subject.

Synonyms: Affirmation; declaration.

verb

Predicate v. t. (past & past part. predicated; pres. part. predicating)

To assert to belong to something; to affirm (one thing of another); as, to predicate whiteness of snow.

To found; to base. (U.S.) Note: Predicate is sometimes used in the United States for found or base; as, to predicate an argument on certain principles; to predicate a statement on information received. Predicate is a term in logic, and used only in a single case, namely, when we affirm one thing of another. "Similitude is not predicated of essences or substances, but of figures and qualities only."

Predicate v. i. To affirm something of another thing; to make an affirmation.

adjective

Predicate adj. Predicated.

See images of 'Predicate'

Etymology of 'Predicate'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Predicate" Quotes from Famous Books

... ask whether a formal concept exists is nonsensical. For no proposition can be the answer to such a question. (So, for example, the question, 'Are there unanalysable subject-predicate propositions?' cannot be asked.) ...

— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein

... the hat expand: wax wide, and swell! Such is its size that none can predicate Or hair, or head, or shoulders of the frame Below thIs bulk, this beauty-burying bulk; Trespassing rude on all who walk beside, Brutally blinding all ...

— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... that notion had struck Rhoda Vivian too, and if she were trying to make up for it. He had noticed that Miss Quincey had the power (if you could predicate power of such a person), a power denied to him, of drawing out the woman-hood of the most beautiful woman in the world; some infinite tenderness in Rhoda answered to the infinite absurdity in her. He was not sure that her attitude to Miss Quincey was not the most beautiful thing ...

— Superseded • May Sinclair

... Wyoming,' and many lyrics. His poetry is careful, scholarlike and polished. Men whose undegenerate spirit, &c. In prose, this would run, "(Ye) men whose spirit has been proved (to be) undegenerate," &c. The word "undegenerate," which is introduced only as an epithet, is the real predicate of ...

— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... be straining the point, nor be dealing in poetical fancies, if we should predicate upon the introduction of the English lark into American society a supplementary influence much needed to unify and nationalise the heterogeneous elements of our population. Men, women, and children, speaking all the languages ...

— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

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