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






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Predicate" Quotes from Famous Books



... then, if it is ever passing out below, predicate about it; first, that it is that; next, that it has this or that quality; or must it not be that, even as we speak, it should straightway become some other thing, and go out under on its way, and be no longer as it is? Now, how could that which is never ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... science, not in the spirit of detraction, but for the sake of a more sound belief concerning reality. The philosopher falls into error no less radical than that of the dogmatic scientist, when he charges the scientist with untruth, and attaches to his concepts the predicate of unreality. The fact that the concepts of science are selected, and only inadequately true of reality, should not be taken to mean that they are sportive or arbitrary. They are not "devices" or abbreviations, in any sense that does not attach to such ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... matters his mind works strongly, his ideas are clear, his observation acute, his conversation sensible and worth listening to. But as to the distinction between common nouns and proper nouns, between the subject and the predicate of a sentence, between the relative pronoun and the demonstrative adjective pronoun, between the perfect and the preter-perfect tense, he is extremely dull and hazy. The region of abstract ideas is to him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... nor infinite, to which some of them had given what Aristotle calls 'a form,' others had ascribed a material nature only. The tendency of their philosophy was to deny to Being all predicates. The Megarians, who succeeded them, like the Cynics, affirmed that no predicate could be asserted of any subject; they also converted the idea of Being into an abstraction of Good, perhaps with the view of preserving a sort of neutrality or indifference between the mind and things. As if they had said, in the language of modern philosophy: 'Being is not only neither finite ...
— Parmenides • Plato

... &c. (proposition) 514, saying, dictum, sentence, ipse dixit[Lat]. emphasis; weight; dogmatism &c. (certainty) 474; dogmatics &c 887. V. assert; make an assertion &c n.; have one's say; say, affirm, predicate, declare, state; protest, profess. put forth, put forward; advance, allege, propose, propound, enunciate, broach, set forth, hold out, maintain, contend, pronounce, pretend. depose, depone, aver, avow, avouch, asseverate, swear; make oath, take one's oath; make an affidavit, swear an affidavit, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... government can long exist among men, unless it is substantially, and in the majority of cases, founded in reason and justice, and sanctioned by experienced utility for the people among whom it exists; and therefore, that we may predicate with perfect certainty of any institution which has been generally extended and long established, that it has been upon the whole beneficial, and should be modified or altered with a very cautious hand. That this proposition is true, will probably be disputed by none who have thought ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... descriptions of its effects. Kindly observe that I am far from accepting either one or the other. Love is, according to me, somewhat akin to mania, a temporary condition of selfishness, a transient confusion of identity. It enables man to predicate of others who are his other selves, that which he is ashamed to say about his real self. I will suppose the beloved object to be ugly, stupid, vicious, perverse, selfish, low minded, or the reverse; ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... (divided diversely) is an adjective of Jagat. See Sreedhara. Both Mr. Davies and Telang seem to take it as a predicate in contra-distinction to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... mutes, we may predicate a) that one half of them is flat, and the other half sharp, and b) that some are continuous, and that ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham

... other editions have die, an obsolete form of the fifth declension. Adverso colle evadunt, 'they worked their way up the opposite hill.' The author might have said in adversum collem, 'they ascended it.' [290] The neuter predicate tutata sunt here refers to two feminine nouns, instead of tutatae sunt; but it is quite in accordance with the custom of Sallust. See Zumpt, S 377. [291] 'What the enemy were doing in every place;' for ubique signifies 'in every place;' not absolutely, but in every one of the places ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)

... sentence is always necessary. A sentence is a unit of thought, an idea reduced to its lowest terms. It may not be necessary that each sentence be analyzed strictly by grammatical rules, but it is essential that the reader should recognize by study if necessary the subject and the predicate and the character and rank of all the modifiers of each. Even the practiced reader by unconsciously laying undue prominence upon some minor phrase frequently modifies the meaning an author intends to convey. This is particularly ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... no man predicate That aught the name of gentleman should have Even in a king's estate Except the heart there be a ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... Passive Voice."—P. 131. Afterwards, in spite of the fancied limitation, he acknowledges the passive use of the participle in ing, and that there is "authority" for it; but, at the same time, most absurdly supposes the word to predicate "action," and also to be wrong: saying, "Action is sometimes predicated of a passive subject. EXAMPLE—'The house is building,.. for.. 'The house is being built,'.. which means.. The house ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... example, the unorganized myriads that one can cover by the phrase "mechanics and engineers," if one uses it in its widest possible sense. At present it would be almost impossible to describe such a thing as a typical engineer, to predicate any universally applicable characteristic of the engineer and mechanic. The black-faced, oily man one figures emerging from the engine-room serves well enough, until one recalls the sanitary engineer with his additions of crockery ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... Liberty is the entire absence of all limitation, and to have no limitation in Being is to be co-extensive with All-Being. We are all grammarians enough to know that the use of a predicate is to lead the mind to contemplate the subject as represented by that predicate; in other words, it limits our conception for the time being to that particular aspect of the subject. Hence every predicate, however extensive, implies some limitation of the subject. But ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... I proceed to dedicate, In honest simple verse, this song to you. And if in flattering strains I do not predicate, 'Tis that I still retain my "buff and blue"; My politics as yet are all to educate: Apostasy's so fashionable, too, To keep one creed's a task grown quite Herculean: Is it not so, ...
— English Satires • Various

... destined, however, to be short-lived. Before proceeding to the expression of concrete ideals, he thinks it necessary to ask a preliminary and quite abstract question, to which his essay is chiefly devoted; namely, what is the right definition of the predicate "good," which we hope to apply in the sequel to such a variety of things? And he answers at once: The predicate "good" is indefinable. This answer he shows to be unavoidable, and so evidently unavoidable that we might perhaps have been ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... with characters and places which are tied to the present by stronger cords than those of the divine age. What the events really were which are involved in the myths of the preceding chapter it is impossible to predicate. That the celestial invasion of the island of Kyushu means the coming thither of a chief and his followers from the continent by way of Korea seems most reasonable. The inter-mixture of Izumo with ...
— Japan • David Murray

... investigation concerning the physical causes of insanity, and have scarcely done more than recognize the possibility of molecular disease of the brain. Hereafter science will, probably, succeed in unveiling the obscure facts of molecular brain pathology, and enable the medical psychologist to predicate disease of recognized classes of brain elements from the special phenomena of mind disturbance. This is the line of inquiry, and the result, to which the progress already made distinctly tends. For the present, the inferences we can surely ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... sentence, with one principal subject and one principal predicate, should try to express one thought and no more. If we try to mix two thoughts in the same sentence, we shall come to grief. Likewise, we shall fail if we attempt to mix two subjects in the ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... agencies at our command, new morality, new wisdom, predicate of the Future by the Past? In ancient States, the mass were slaves; civilization and freedom rested with oligarchies; in Athens twenty thousand citizens, four hundred thousand slaves! How easy decline, degeneracy, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... purpose, followed by a child-like docility and a womanly softness; the grave, the gay, the resolute, the fickle; the firm, the yielding, the unsparing, and the tender-hearted,—blending their contrarieties into one nature, of whose capabilities one cannot predicate the bounds, but to whom, by some luckless fatality of fortune, the great rewards of life have been generally withheld until one begins to feel that the curse of Swift was less the sarcasm wrung from indignant failures than the cold and stern ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... Bradley's difficulty in seeing how sugar can be sweet intellectualism outstrips itself and becomes openly a sort of verbalism. Sugar is just sugar and sweet is just sweet; neither is the other; nor can the word 'is' ever be understood to join any subject to its predicate rationally. Nothing 'between' things can connect them, for 'between' is just that third thing, 'between,' and would need itself to be connected to the first and second things by two still finer betweens, and so ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... water-sprinklers of some upstart priesthood, and that my son may apply for lustration to the son of my groom. The interest of such men requires that the spirit of arms and of arts be extinguished. They will predicate peace, that the people may be tractable to them; but a religion altogether pacific is the fomenter of wars and the nurse of crimes, alluring Sloth from within and Violence from afar. If ever it should prevail among the Romans, it must prevail alone: for nations more vigorous ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... was alone. Of anyone else it would have been said that she must be finding the afternoon rather dreary in the quaint halls not of her forefathers: but of Miss Power it was unsafe to predicate so surely. She walked from room to room in a black velvet dress which gave decision to her outline without depriving it of softness. She occasionally clasped her hands behind her head and looked out of a window; but she more particularly ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... first of existences, father of many sons, the Absolute Reason; unseen, tremendous, immovable, in distant glory; yet himself amenable to that abysmal unity which Homer calls Fate, the source of all which is, yet in Itself Nothing, without predicate, unnameable. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... infinitely good, worked itself out into its logical consequence—agnostic theism. Philo will allow of no point of contact between God and a world in which evil exists. For him God has no relation to space or to time, and, as infinite, suffers no predicate beyond that of existence. It is therefore absurd to ascribe to Him mental faculties and affections comparable in the remotest degree to those of men; He is in no way an object of cognition; He is [Greek] and ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... may stand in predicate relation to the direct object of a transitive verb, as well as to the subject of an intransitive verb (19). Such a predicate adjective, agreeing in number (21) with the object of the verb, but remaining in the nominative case, indicates the result ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman

... one of her charts and, placing a finger on a point, she would say: "Here is General ——'s detachment; here is the rebel army; such and such are the fortifications and surrounding circumstances; and she would then begin thoughtfully to predicate the result ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell

... was "Female Heroism," and as she sought among the dusky annals of the past for instances in confirmation of her predicate, that female intellect was capable of the most exalted attainments, and that the elements of her character would enable woman to cope successfully with difficulties of every class, her voice grew clear, firm, and deep. Quitting the fertile fields of history, she painted ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... beard to grow, so that people really thought I was getting older and older; at last I acquired the reputation of a prophet, and was held in veneration by a great many religious people. Of course I could not prophesy, but as I had such a vast deal of experience I was able to predicate intelligently something about the future from my knowledge of the past. I became famed as a wonderful seer, and there were a great many curious ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton

... are cases where the subject is qualified rather than the verb, as with verbs of incomplete predication, 'being,' 'seeming,' 'arriving,' etc. In 'the matter seems clear,' 'clear' is part of the predicate of 'matter.' 'They arrived safe': 'safe' does not qualify 'arrived,' but goes with it to complete the predicate. So, 'he sat silent,' 'he stood firm.' 'It comes beautiful' and 'it comes beautifully' have different meanings. This ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... just hands. 'Just' belongs to the predicate: 'to lay their just hands' to lay their hands with justice. golden key. Comp. Matt. xvi. 19, "I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven"; ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... hath a soul, hath a soul. What is this more than trifling with words? It is but like a monkey shifting his oyster from one hand to the other: and had he but words, might no doubt have said, 'Oyster in right hand is subject, and oyster in left hand is predicate:' and so might have made a self-evident proposition of oyster, i.e. oyster is oyster; and yet, with all this, not have been one whit the wiser or more knowing: and that way of handling the matter would much at one ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke

... 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 ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair

... the neglected youthhead of the States in which it is most broadly apparent. The deterioration of a single generation left to run wild may influence for the worse, during whole centuries, the character of a people; and who can predicate what these colonies of the southern hemisphere are yet to become? They may be great nations, influencing for good or evil the destinies of the species in ages of the world when Britain shall have sunk into a subordinate power, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... predicated accidentally, predicates, not substance, but quantity, or quality, or some other mode of being. If therefore the human nature accrues accidentally, when we say Christ is man, we do not predicate substance, but quality or quantity, or some other mode of being, which is contrary to the Decretal of Pope Alexander III, who says (Conc. Later. iii): "Since Christ is perfect God and perfect man, what ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... into a system of esoteric Christianity. God is the nameless and supra-essential One, elevated above goodness itself. Hence 'negative theology,' which ascends from the creature to God by dropping one after another every determinate predicate, leads us nearest to the truth. The return to God is the consummation of all things and the goal indicated by Christian teaching. The same doctrines were preached with more of churchly fervour by Maximus the Confessor (580-622). ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... each rule and definition. The study of grammar requires some use of mental power; but when it is presented to pupils by the aid of an object which, in itself and in what it does, illustrates the subject and the predicate of a sentence, the work of comprehending the offices which words perform is rendered comparatively easy. Having the skeleton thus furnished, and with the eyes and minds of the pupils fixed upon an object that possesses known and appreciable powers and ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... is older than I am, but he is young enough. Upon the probable duration of his life one might predicate forty years of mental activity, and from what I have seen of him he appears to have a good intellect. They talk about an aqueduct and waterworks he is about to construct. That indicates the study of geology, and engineering ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton

... allow it; I only said I did not know it to be the case. But as for what I just said, take two types of mankind, a Chinese and an Englishman, for instance. If you met a fair-haired, blue-eyed, sanguine Englishman, whose head and features were shaped precisely like those of a Chinaman, you could predicate of him that he must be a very extraordinary creature, capable, perhaps, of becoming a driveling idiot. The same of a Chinese, if you met one with a brain shaped like that of an Englishman, and similar features, but with straight black hair, a yellow skin, and red ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... or settled" is a predicate common to natural and supernatural, not the differentia of either. And here let me remark that the expression, "Laws of Nature," is a modern technical expression which the Catholic philosopher would require, probably, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... to me, is the immortality we so glibly predicate of departed artists. If they survive at all, it is but a shadowy life they live, moving on through the gradations of slow decay to distant but inevitable death. They can no longer, as heretofore, speak directly to the hearts of ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... marking the highest point of a climax, the predicate is read with "religion," and with it alone. When so great a thing as religion is said to be at stake, everything else is dropped out of sight, or is held to be included. But write the three names as if they were of equal importance; the comma ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce

... thoughts as, standing there in the door, she gazed upon her rival? Did she not recognize her as such, or was she moved by the touch of sorrow, aftermath of the morning's bitterness, that still lingered on the young wife's face? Events seemed to predicate the former, but, be that as it may, the eyes which grief and despair had heated till they flamed like small crucibles of molten gold, now cooled to their usual soft brown; smiling, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... Fairyland, where the Bible and Burn's justice are unknown, where a prank which on this earth would be rewarded with the pillory is merely matter for a peal of elvish laughter. A real Homer, a real Careless, would, it is admitted, be exceedingly bad men. But to predicate morality or immorality of the Horner of Wycherley and the Careless of Congreve is as absurd as it would be to arraign a sleeper for his dreams. "They belong to the regions of pure comedy, where no cold moral reigns. When we are among them we are among a chaotic people. We are not to judge them ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... truism, it were well that we limited the use of it. Every commonplace or trite observation is not a truism. For example: A good name helps a man on in the world. This is nothing but a simple truth, however hackneyed. It has a distinct subject and predicate. But when the thing predicated is involved in the term of the subject, and so necessarily involved that by no possible conception they can be separated, then it becomes a truism; as to say, A good name is a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... ladies and gentlemen," he observed, as soon as Paul ceased, "to have the honour of being wracked (for so the steward, in conformity with the Doric of the forecastle, pronounced the word,) in such company. I should deem it a disgrace to be cast away in some society I could name, although I will predicate, as we say in America, nothing on their absence. As to what inwolves the stores, it surgested itself to me that the ladies would like delicate diet, and I intermated as much to Mrs. Sidley and t'other French waiting-woman. Do you imagine, gentlemen, that the souls of the dead are permitted ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... something of that still higher nature that he feels burning within him—of his present state, his future destiny, of the Being who made him, to whose judgment-seat he is going. The master's interests cry, "No!" "Such knowledge is too wonderful for you; it is high, you cannot attain unto it." To predicate happiness of a class of beings, placed in circumstances where their will is everlastingly defeated by an irresistible power—the abolitionists say, is to prove them destitute of the sympathies of our nature—not human. It is to declare with the Atheist, that man is ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... senses, which say that sin is an evil power, and substance is perishable. Intelligent Spirit, Soul, is substance, far more impregnable and solid than matter; for one is temporal, while the other is eternal, the ultimate [5] and predicate of being. ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... synthesis, the combining of separate elements or minor wholes into an inclusive unity. It differs from mere "disintegration', in proceeding on a definite scientific plan. In grammar, analysis is the breaking up of a sentence into subject, predicate, object, &c. (an exercise introduced into English schools by J. D. Morell about 1852); so the analysis of a book or a lecture is a synopsis of the main points. The chief technical uses of the word, which retains practically the same meaning in all the sciences, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... broadly speaking, of two not very sharply distinguished portions. On the one hand it is concerned with those general statements which can be made concerning everything without mentioning any one thing or predicate or relation, such for example as "if x is a member of the class [alpha] and every member of [alpha] is a member of [beta], then x is a member of the class [beta], whatever x, [alpha], and [beta] may be." On the other hand, it is concerned ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... sun is called "the candle of God." A book just bought is "my late literary acquisition." Facts such as "I returned to Llangollen by nearly the same way by which I had come," abound. Sentences straight from his note book, lacking either in subject or predicate, occur here and there. At times a clause with no sort of value is admitted, as when, forgetting the name of Kilvey Hill, he says that Swansea town and harbour "are overhung on the side of the east by a lofty green mountain ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... whole nor a part that it is neither perfect nor imperfect, that it is neither animate nor inanimate, that it neither is moved nor rests nor subsists, that it is neither corporeal nor incorporeal; and that this and no other thing is meant by NOTHING? Since, then, they alone predicate that of the universe which all others do of NOTHING, it seems plain that they make the universe and NOTHING to be the same. Time must then be said to be nothing; the same also must be said of predicate, axiom, junction, conjunction, which terms they use more than ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... in, is even more arbitrary than the assertions of the Catholics or the Orthodox. If we admit the idea of a church in the sense Homyakov gives to it—that is, a body of men bound together by love and truth—then all that any man can predicate in regard to this body, if such an one exists, is its love and truth, but there can be no outer signs by which one could reckon oneself or another as a member of this holy body, nor by which one could put anyone outside it; so that no institution having an external existence can ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... For all who have in anywise reflected on the divine nature deny that God has a body. Of this they find excellent proof in the fact that we understand by body a definite quantity, so long, so broad, so deep, bounded by a certain shape, and it is the height of absurdity to predicate such a thing of God, a being absolutely infinite. But meanwhile by other reasons with which they try to prove their point, they show that they think corporeal or extended substance wholly apart from the divine nature, and say it was created by God. Wherefrom the divine nature ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza

... God! what fine talking is this?" retorted the Spaniard. "There is little chance of the triumph you predicate for your countryman. Trust me, we shall have to greet his departure from the debate with many hisses and few cheers; and if we could penetrate through the plates of yon iron door, and gaze into the court it conceals from our view, we ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... can not discover in the facts and circumstances of the case any just principles upon which Sir Howard Douglas could predicate his protest. He has, however, submitted the note which he had the honor to receive from Mr. Vaughan to the President of the United States, and is by him directed to say in reply that although this Government ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... with their offspring, can be more than an arbitrary "unit" as concerns sex, since inbreeding eventually impoverishes the stock. Hence outcrosses are necessary. To intelligibly consider the sex problem in the human species, then, we must always predicate a considerable group of people, with such organization and division of activities as to guarantee that all the processes necessary to survival will be carried on. Sex is a group problem. Considering the mutual interdependence and the diversity of activities in human society, to make ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... hand, it is equally little in question that this degree of mental development had been attained long before the opening of our historical period. The primeval man, then, whose scientific knowledge we are attempting to predicate, had become, through his conception of fishes, birds, and hairy animals as separate classes, a scientific zoologist of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... the active consciousness is stilled by slumber, subconsciousness or ganglionic consciousness remains awake, and sometimes makes itself evident in dreams. I have repeatedly observed my terrier when under dream influence, and have been able to predicate the substance of his dreams from his actions. Like man, the dog is sometimes unable to differentiate between his waking and dreaming thoughts; he confounds the one with the other, and follows out in his waking state the ideas suggested ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... be two infinities, nor can there be an infinite and also a finite beyond it. What infinity may be we have no means of knowing. Here the most devout Christian is just as much of an agnostic as Professor Huxley; we can predicate nothing with confidence concerning the all-comprehending unity wherein we live and move and have our being, save and except as we see it manifested in that part of our universe which lies open to us. One would think that this were so obvious ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell

... their young days it was used as a schoolbook, and thought necessary as a part of polite education; and as they have read little or nothing since, it is only reasonable that they should stick to their colours. Indeed, the French satirist's boast that he could predicate the views of any man with regard to both worlds, if he were only supplied with the simple data of his age and his income, is quite true in the general with regard to literary taste. Given the age of the ordinary individual—that is to say of the gentleman 'fond of books, but ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... of the materials—the majestic style of the artistic treatment as distinguished from the original creative power—which Dryden, the translator of the Roman poet, familiar therefore with his weakness and with his strength, meant in this place to predicate as characteristically observable ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... a sign, are we to take that as signifying a spiritual necessity (phusis) or as a psychological convention (nomos)? Aristotle made a valuable contribution to this difficult question, when he spoke of a kind of proposition other than those which predicate truth or falsehood, that is, logic. With him euchae is the term proper to designate desires and aspirations, which are the vehicle of poetry and of oratory. (It must be remembered that for Aristotle words, like poetry, belonged to mimetic.) The profound remark about the third mode of proposition ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... sessions preceding the present I have adverted to the difficulty attending the settlement of this great question, and have urgently besought action in advance at a time when the measure adopted could not serve to predicate its results to either party. My failure then gave me great uneasiness, and filled me with anxiety; and yet I can now comprehend the wisdom concealed in my disappointment, for in the very emergency of this hour, in the shadow of the danger ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... and so inaugurated the custom, now continued merely as an excuse for a cigar? Some one said once that a man finds in a great city just the qualities he takes to it. That's true of romance as well. Modern novelists don't find beauty and nobility in life, because they don't look for them. They predicate from their inner souls that the world is 'cheap and nasty' and that is what they find it to be. There is more true romance in a New York tenement than there ever was in a baron's tower—braver battles, truer love, ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... ascribing to it the right to claim from us the particular mood called seriousness,—which means the willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain. The same is true of him who says that all is vanity. For indefinable as the predicate 'vanity' may be in se, it is clearly something that permits anaesthesia, mere escape from suffering, to be our rule of life. There can be no greater incongruity than for a disciple of Spencer to proclaim with one breath that the substance of things is unknowable, and ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... sentinel fidelity residence direct intimate continent digest levity finance indivisible defensible hilarious reticent imitate equidistant predicate maritime reticule piazza nobility ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins

... was taught in 2,400. In the former year Cookery was taught in 925 schools, in the latter year in 2,665. In 1899, Laundry Work was taught in 11 schools, in 1910 in 691. If this is not progression—and progression under the Legislative Union—to what can the predicate be more truthfully applied? Statistics are apt to be barren and uninforming and can be adapted, with almost equal plausibility, to support the arguments of either side; but these figures are eloquent and speak for themselves. They embody a large and vital portion ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... why "equality" can never be predicated of them. Power in the family, in industry, in civil affairs, war, and religion is not the same thing and cannot be. Each sex has more power for one domain, and must have less power for another. Equality is an incongruous predicate. "Under the influence of the law of battle the male has become more courageous, powerful, and pugnacious than the female.... So, too, the male has, in the struggle, often acquired great beauty, success on his part ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... of three parts: the Subject, the Predicate, and the Copula. The predicate is the name denoting that which is affirmed or denied. The subject is the name denoting the person or thing which something is affirmed or denied of. The copula is the sign denoting that there is an affirmation or denial, and thereby enabling the hearer or reader ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... centre—cold as the temperature of space. If the materials of the moon were what a mathematician would call absolutely rigid, there can be no doubt that the tides could no longer exist, and the moon would be emancipated from tidal control. It seems impossible to predicate how far the moon can ever conform to the circumstances of an actual rigid body, but it may be conceivable that at some future time the tidal control shall have practically ceased. There would then be no longer any necessary ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... mean by that general expression of yours?—It is impossible to predicate what may happen in time of panic and alarm. A great alarm prevailed certainly amongst the commercial world, and it could never have been alleviated, except by some extraordinary means of relief. We might probably have ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot

... the mind moves on. We are conscious of existence only by the succession of our feelings. We are conscious of time only by its lapse. Hence we are apt to make the same measure serve for both; and, as our own dispositions predicate, so doth time run fast or slow. True it is that time cannot measure thought. The mind notes but the current and passage of its own feelings; they only are the measure of existence and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... well-established monarchies! One cannot help desiring, nevertheless, that men of honour should have the management of it. Were they men of humane feeling too, it would be so much the better. Is it possible to predicate these things of the persons who gave poor Carteret his orders? Is it possible to believe he was expected to circumnavigate the world in the Swallow? An opinion has already been ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... 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

... seq..) He did, indeed, adopt Kant's view of the aesthetic Judgment as singular ("individual''); though he secures a certain degree of logical universality for it by emphasizing the point that the predicate (beauty) is permanently true of the same aesthetic object. At the same time, by referring the beauty of concrete objects to certain aesthetic relations, he virtually accepted the possibility of universal aesthetic judgments (cf. supra.) Since he thus reduces beauty to abstract relations he is known ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... sort of fellow—we who are used to studying boys all know him well enough—of whom you can predicate with almost positive certainty, after he has been a month at school, that he is sure to have a fight, and with almost equal certainty that he will have but one. Tom Brown was one of these; and as it is our well-weighed intention to give a full, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... republics still formed a great corporation, at the head of which was the German Emperor. Even the crown of France had to submit to manifold and wearisome negotiations in order to obtain the predicate of "majesty," which until then had belonged exclusively to the Emperor. The other sovereigns then laid claim to the same dignity as that enjoyed by the King of France, and the Venetian republic to an equal rank with those, on the score of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... could not predicate these simple joys of the people I have been talking of, for the very reason, that they were themselves so simple. It was our sophistication which enabled us to taste pleasures which would have been insipidities to them. Their palates would have demanded other flavours—social ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... delusion of the Anti-Trinitarians arises out of this, that they apply the property of imaginable matter—in which A. is, that is, can only be imagined, by exclusion of B. as the universal predicate of all ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... asks me for some authority for the alleged practice of Roman potters (or crock-vendors) to rub wax into the flaws of their unsound vessels. This was the very burden of my Query! I am no proficient in the Latin classics: yet I think I know enough to predicate that [Pi]. [Beta]. is wrong in his version ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various

... come an interruption which would throw it back upon itself in such a way as to multiply its malignant force. But again it is a part of the Great Plan that instruments whose use man's finite mind could never predicate should be employed: the seeming good to evil, the seeming ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... a dozen pressgangs' for manning the navy in war-time, and, for aught we can predicate to the contrary, they may be so again; but we reiterate our conviction, that they never caused sailors to ship aboard a man-o'-war. Landsmen might volunteer by scores through the influence of such stirring, patriotic ditties; but seamen, who 'knew the ropes,' would ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various

... a tragic side to this question. I mean that, after all, a sublime simplicity of mind is a necessary predicate to the acceptance of this "cheap" fiction. "A penn'orth o' loove," George the Fourth calls a novelette, and there's something very grim to me in ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... predicate from this that Mr Palliser's chance of being able to shipwreck himself upon that rock was but small, and that he would, in spite of himself, be saved from his uncle's anger. Lord Dumbello took the letter and read it very slowly, standing, as he did so, with ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... largest words in the vocabulary of thought are "Christian" and "Science." The former is the highest style of man; the latter reveals and interprets God and man; it aggregates, amplifies, unfolds, and expresses the ALL-God. The life of Christ is the predicate and postulate of all that I teach, and there is but one standard statement, one rule, and one Principle for ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy

... of truth, and convicted Haeckel of "ignorance" and "dishonesty;" while the philosopher Paulsen made short work of the "Weltraetsel" from his own standpoint, ("if a book could drip with superficiality, I should predicate that of the 19th chapter"). Harnack also condemned the theological section in the "Christliche Welt," and Troeltsch, Hoenigswald, and Hohlfeld took Haeckel severely to task on philosophic grounds. The naturalists have thus ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert

... You are not familiar with our terms. You lack the comprehensio visi. The earnest student of logic knows this and more than this. He understands the nature of subject, predicate, and contingent, and the ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... is predicated of another, all that which is predicable of the predicate will be predicable also of the subject. Thus, 'man' is predicated of the individual man; but 'animal' is predicated of 'man'; it will, therefore, be predicable of the individual man also: for the individual man ...
— The Categories • Aristotle

... Chamberlain on "The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century," especially the preface, which is written by a man who uses a better style than Chamberlain, you will find that he attempts to summarize the progress of the previous eighteen centuries as a predicate for the strides of human civilization in the nineteenth. As he minimizes the effect of one century and then another, you note how few centuries, in his judgment, play any part in the onward march, and you are discouraged as to what one man can do to help along any movement that shall ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft

... flush of mingled pride and shame with which she had spoken, and never had it looked more lovely. The father considered it for a moment, less with admiration than with curiosity: this daughter of his was an unknown quantity: he never could predicate what she would do or say. Certainly she surprised him once more when she lifted her head, ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... anything that you could safely predicate of all the inhabitants of India, and I confess to a little nervous tremor whenever I see a sentence beginning with "The people of India," or even with "All the Brahmans," or "All the Buddhists." What follows is almost invariably wrong. There is a greater difference between ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... may be true or not that a given mode of conduct has a tendency to evoke in us moral indignation or moral approval. Hence a moral judgment is true or false according as its subject has or has not that tendency which the predicate attributes to it. If I say that it is wrong to resist evil, and yet resistance to evil has no tendency whatever to call forth in me an emotion of moral disapproval, then my judgment is false." The conclusion drawn from this is that there are no general moral truths, and that "the object of ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... originates in | Ramus's methodology and, more | formerly, in Aristotle's POSTERIOR | ANALYTICS. To characterize the nature | of the premises required for the | foundation of true demonstrations, | Aristotle had set down three | criteria: the predicate must be true | in every instance of its subject; it | must be part of the essential nature | of the subject; and it must be | universal, that is, related to the | subject by itself and QUA itself. | Aristotle was defining ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon

... to be shifted from Mrs. Ormond to her convert, whom he followed with his tolerant eyes. "Nothing in all this sort of inquiry is so impossible to predicate as the effect of any given instance upon a given mind. It ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells

... can be no sound without an ear to appreciate it, so there be can no matter without an existing ego, in some state of consciousness in the universe, to apprehend it—to ascribe to it attributes.[2] On what, therefore, are we to predicate the existence of either matter or motion, except it be these intuitions of consciousness whose validity, so far as we have any knowledge whatever on the subject, rests exclusively on that "breath of life," which was breathed into man when he became a living soul? But if our ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... towards, didaskalian, doctrinal truth. Now this sentence, when thus rendered into English according to the rigor of the Grecian letter, wants something to complete its sense—it wants an is. There is a subject, as the logicians say, and there is a predicate (or, something affirmed of that subject), but there is no copula to connect them—we miss the is. This omission is common in Greek, but cannot be allowed in English. The is must be supplied; but where must it be supplied? That's ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... accept his suggestion, or she would not: but at least she would waste no time in protestations and objections, or any vain sacrifice to the idols of conformity. The conviction that one could, on any given point, almost predicate this of her, gave him the sense of having advanced far enough in her intimacy to urge his arguments against a hasty pursuit of ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... the same way, all form by which one could predicate the existence of the saint is abandoned and uprooted like a fan palm[515], so that it will never grow up in future. The saint who is released from what is styled form is deep, immeasurable, hard to fathom, like the great ocean. It does not fit the case to say either that ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... is often used to separate a subject with several modifiers, or with a long modifier, from the predicate verb. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... specially during the last few months of happy and intimate companionship, that if ever mother knew her child, she knew Richard—through and through. But it appeared she had been mistaken. For here was a new Richard, at once terrible and magnificent, regarding whom she could predicate nothing with certainty. He defied her tenderness, he out-paced her imagination, he paralysed her will. Between his thoughts, desires, intentions, and hers, a blind blank space had suddenly intruded itself, impenetrable ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... sunt potentes a seculo (these are mighty men from the beginning). But the word seculum (olam) does not here signify duration of time, nor does it predicate extent. These giants did not exist from the beginning, they were not born until the sons of God had degenerated. But seculum (olam) connotes a second predicate, that of substance, so that Moses explains the nature of the power in which they trusted to have been secular or worldly. They ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... these conditions is wrong and foolish. The conditions will be done away with, and human nature will change. The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV. was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde

... fording a swift stream can dip his foot twice into the same water, so no man can, with exactness, affirm of anything in the sensible world that it is.[Note 2] As he utters the words, nay, as he thinks them, the predicate ceases to be applicable; the present has become the past; the "is" should be "was." And the more we learn of the nature of things, the more evident is it that what we call rest is only unperceived activity; that seeming peace is silent but ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... resources. The fact is, every year improves our fabrics. Our mechanics, our manufacturers, are working with an energy, a zeal, and a skill that carry things forward faster than anybody dreams of; and nobody can predicate the character of American articles in any department now by their character even ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... beyond peradventure if it relates to Negroes. One who writes of the development of the Negro race must continually insist that he is writing of a normal human stock, and that whatever it is fair to predicate of the mass of human beings may be predicated of the Negro. It is the silent refusal to do this which has led to so much false writing on Africa and of its inhabitants. Take, for instance, the answer to the apparently simple question "What is a Negro?" We find the most extraordinary ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... consciousness is only possible under the antithesis of a subject and an object known only in correlation, and mutually limiting each other"[318] Thought necessarily supposes conditions; "to think is simply to condition," that is, to predicate limits; and as the infinite is the unlimited, it can not be thought. The very attempt to think the infinite renders it finite; therefore there can be no infinite in thought, and, consequently, the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... turn every word I am saying into burlesque,"—immediately observing here, in a reverential parenthesis "(never Shakspere, by-the-bye)—and at others my heart aches and I cry real, bitter, warm tears as earnestly as if I was in earnest." Reading which last sentence, one might very safely predicate that in the one instance, where she could turn her words into burlesque, she would be certain to act but indifferently, whereas in the other, with the hot, scalding tears running down her face, she could not by necessity do otherwise than ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... argument; but even here it is safer to reduce the proposition to one which is grammatically single, "Municipal government by commission has proved itself superior to municipal government with a mayor and two chambers." A predicate wholly single is a safeguard against meaning ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner



Words linked to "Predicate" :   asseverate, imply, predication, phrase, term, verb phrase, connote, maintain, relate, predicate calculus, predicative, logic, proclaim, predicator, interrelate, assert



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