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Predicate   /prˈɛdəkˌeɪt/  /prˈɛdɪkət/   Listen
Predicate

noun
1.
(logic) what is predicated of the subject of a proposition; the second term in a proposition is predicated of the first term by means of the copula.
2.
One of the two main constituents of a sentence; the predicate contains the verb and its complements.  Synonym: verb phrase.



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"Predicate" Quotes from Famous Books



... place he asks, What are the antecedents of fetich-worship? He appears to conceive himself to be arguing with persons (p. 127) who 'have taken for granted that every human being was miraculously endowed with the concept of what forms the predicate of every fetich, call it power, spirit, or god.' If there are reasoners so feeble, they must be left to the punishment inflicted by Mr. Muller. On the other hand, students who regard the growth of the idea of power, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... sentence containing a simple subject and a simple predicate; as: "The boy threw his ball into the river." "The boy lost his ball in the river." "The boy's ball fell into the river." "The boy swam into the river after his ball," etc. This group contains 76 per ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman

... history of the human mind and the nature of language are almost wholly ignored, and the certainty of objective knowledge is transferred to the subject; while absolute truth is reduced to a figment, more abstract and narrow than Plato's ideas, of 'thing in itself,' to which, if we reason strictly, no predicate can ...
— Meno • Plato

... positive conception of God as a Person cannot be included under this pseudo-concept of the Infinite. Whereas Mr. Mill, by laying down the maxim that the meaning of the abstract must be sought in the concrete, quietly assumes that this pseudo-infinite is a proper predicate of God, to be tested by its applicability to the subject, and that what Hamilton says of this infinite cannot be true unless it is also true of God. Of this refutation, Hamilton, were he living, might truly say, as he said of a former criticism on another part of his writings,—"This ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel

... 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 draw from known facts are very ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... claim, the next thing is to select some specimens and subject them to the test of the "fire assay." For this purpose it is customary to select the richest lump you can find, and take it to the assayer. On the result of his assay, he will predicate that a ton of such ore would yield hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars; and in this way many a worthless mine has been sold for a large price. In fact, I think, as a rule, the speculators made far more than ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman

... d or ed, and is limited to the 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 is becoming built." On this, he remarks thus: "This ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... little heed till a decade or so later, when three new elements, gallium, scandium, and germanium, were discovered, which, on being analyzed, were quite unexpectedly found to fit into three gaps which Mendeleeff had left in his periodic scale. In effect the periodic law had enabled Mendeleeff to predicate the existence of the new elements years before they were discovered. Surely a system that leads to such results is no mere vagary. So very soon the periodic law took its place as one of the most important generalizations of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... our own 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 ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... are highest and Radiates lowest, how do the Articulates and Mollusks stand to these and to each other? To me it seems, that, while both are decidedly superior to the Radiates and inferior to the Vertebrates, we cannot predicate absolute superiority or inferiority of organization of either of these groups as compared with each other; they stand on one structural level, though with different tendencies,—the body in Mollusks having ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... question of Honor herself. She was not the woman lightly to withdraw her love, once given. And yet—in a year—who could tell? Love, like the spirit, bloweth where it listeth; and Paul's failure did not of necessity predicate his own. For all her sudden bewildering reserves, she had drawn very near to him in those last terrible weeks at Kohat; and now—now—if he could believe there was the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... 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 to her thought. In person he was here close beside her, in mind he was ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... manner of the eighteenth century, which may be thought to mark complete culture in the handling of abstract questions. The humanist, the possessor of that complete culture, does not "weep" over the failure of "a theory of the quantification of the predicate," nor "shriek" over the fall of a philosophical formula. A kind of humour is, in truth, one of the conditions of the just mental attitude, in the criticism of by-past stages of thought. Humanity cannot afford to be too serious ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... PRINCIPLES—Subject and Predicate, Inflection, Number, Nominative Subject, Possessive Genitive, Agreement of Verb, Direct Object, ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge

... decidedly alert, and somewhat self-congratulatory that I was not more scared. No man can predicate how efficient he is going to be in the presence of really dangerous game. Only the actual trial will show. This is not a question of courage at all, but of purely involuntary reaction of the nerves. ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... such stage of abstraction; but, on the other 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

... give place to no moral contingencies, by which hopes are so often wrecked, and hearts broken. Now, in regard to Mr. Gray, there is nothing in his character, so far as I can, read it, upon which to predicate safe calculations of this kind. He is intelligent, and highly interesting as a companion. His personal appearance and his address are attractive. But all below the exterior is hidden. The moral qualities of ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur

... existence; or, who 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 have satisfied ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke

... Mr. Beam, he 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

... egin{flame} Predicate logic is the only good programming language. Anyone who would use anything else is an idiot. Also, all computers should be tredecimal ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... feeling gives a WHAT; and if other feelings should succeed which remember the first, its WHAT may stand as subject or predicate of some piece of knowledge-about, of some judgment, perceiving relations between it and other WHATS which the other feelings may know. The hitherto dumb Q will then receive a name and be no longer speechless. ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... 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 ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... 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 that has drawn so nigh to us, has been ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... 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 ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... 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 ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... 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, my ...
— English Satires • Various

... tell himself, a moment later, that his last hope of self-control would be lost if he yielded to the temptation of seeing a hidden purpose in everything she said and did. How much Flamel guessed, he had no means of divining; nor could he predicate, from what he knew of the man, to what use his inferences might be put. The very qualities that had made Flamel a useful adviser made him the most dangerous of accomplices. Glennard felt himself agrope among alien forces that his own act had set ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton

... in such men as, smitten with admiration of a certain cluster of excellencies, or series of heroic acts, are willing to predicate of the individual to whom they belong, "This man is consummate, and without alloy." Take the person in his retirement, in his hours of relaxation, when he has no longer a part to play, and one or more spectators before whom he is desirous to appear to ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... subject it can be known only by itself: it can never become the object of knowledge and language is inadequate to describe it. All that can be said of it is neti, neti, that is no, no: it is not anything which we try to predicate of it. But he who knows that the individual soul is the Atman, becomes Atman; being it, he knows it and knows all the world: he perceives that in all the world there is no plurality. Here the later doctrine ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... paleontological evidence whatever. These, of course, furnish data of a very tangible and convincing kind; but the evidence in its totality includes also a host of data from the realms of embryology and comparative anatomy—data which, as already suggested, enabled Professor Haeckel to predicate the existence of pithecanthropus long in advance of his actual discovery. Whether the more remote gaps in the chain of man's ancestry will be bridged in a manner similarly in accord with Professor Haeckel's ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... 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 ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... all minds, and without which, indeed, intelligence cannot exist, has unavoidable inconveniences. Through it alone can truth be reached; and yet it almost inevitably betrays into error. But for the tendency to predicate of every other case, that which has been found in the observed cases, there could be no rational thinking; and yet by this indispensable tendency, men are perpetually led to found, on limited experience, propositions which they wrongly assume to be universal or absolute. In ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... scientific demonstration do to the speculative reason: for both sets of principles are self-evident. A thing is said to be self-evident in two ways, either in itself, or in reference to us. In itself every proposition, the predicate of which can be got from consideration of the subject is said to be self-evident. But it happens that to one who is ignorant of the definition of the subject, such a proposition will not be self-evident: as this proposition, Man is a rational being, is ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

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

... "of Mr. Southey's calumnies on a different occasion, knowing them to be such, which he scattered abroad on his return from Switzerland against me and others.... What his 'death-bed' may be it is not my province to predicate; let him settle it with his Maker, as I must do with mine. There is something at once ludicrous and blasphemous in this arrogant scribbler of all works sitting down to deal damnation and destruction upon his fellow-creatures, with Wat Tyler, the Apotheosis of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... is in Mark and the Clementines a predicate, in Matthew the subject. In the introduction to the Eschatological discourse the Clementines approach more nearly to St. Mark than to any other Gospel: [Greek: Horate] ([Greek: blepeis], Mark) ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... of hope is not the possible as differentiating the true, for thus the possible ensues from the relation of a predicate to a subject. The object of hope is the possible as compared to a power. For such is the division of the possible given in Metaph. v, 12, i.e. into the two ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... nothing more than the substitution of pride for sensuality. I grant it, I think I shall have something to say on this point presently; but this is not a necessary result, it is but an incidental evil, a danger which may be realized or may be averted, whereas we may in most cases predicate guilt, and guilt of a heinous kind, where the mind is suffered to run wild and indulge its thoughts without training or law of any kind; and surely to turn away a soul from mortal sin is a good and a gain so far, whatever ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... or proof." We learn, also, that "sometimes the first is called the premises (sic), and sometimes the first premiss"; as also that "the first is sometimes called the proposition, or subject, or affirmative, and the next the predicate, and sometimes the middle term." To which is added, with a mark of exclamation at the end, "but in analyzing the syllogism, there is a middle term, and a predicate too, in each of the lines!" It is clear that Aristotle ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... that word has now come to be used. The study of logic consists, 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 with ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... in the penetration—in the observation of the feminine mind; more than I have, if you will excuse my frankness, in their power of dealing with a practical situation. Woman to interpret events, men to foresee contingencies. Woman to indicate, man to predicate—perhaps I mean predict! No matter; the thought, I think, is clear. Well, then, that is settled! I claim Howard for luncheon—a very simple affair—and for a walk; and by five o'clock we shall have settled this ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... subject predicate. In Old English, the Normal order is found chiefly in independent clauses. The predicate is followed by its modifiers: S hwl bi micle l:ssa onne re hwalas, That whale is much smaller than other whales; Ond h geseah tw scipu, And ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith

... distinct manifestations of it. Thus Mr. Parker tells us that, stripping the "religious sentiment" in man "of all accidental circumstances peculiar to the age, nation, sect, or individual, and pursuing a sharp and final analysis till the subject and predicate can no longer be separated, we find as the ultimate fact, that the religious sentiment is this,—'a sense of dependence.' This sentiment does not itself disclose the character, and still less the nature and essence, of the ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... 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

... upright with her hands on her lap was of another type altogether—of that type of which it is impossible to predicate anything except that it makes itself felt in every company. Any respectable astrologer would have had no difficulty in assigning her birth to the sign of the Scorpion. In outward appearance she was not remarkable, though extremely pleasing, ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... quenched. All the essential elements of life itself are to be mortified that the soul may, unhampered by its own entanglement, reach that consummation which is supposed to be final. And what is it? Who can tell? The Aryan philosopher himself stands mute in its presence. All that we can predicate of it is not life and happiness, according to any standard of human experience known or imagined. The idea that the individual soul will finally sink into and blend with the Absolute Being as a drop of water returns to and mingles with its mother ocean may seem plausible to the philosopher; ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... Six-Cross-Roads was the saloon, which bore the painted legends: on the west wall, "Last Chance"; on the east wall, "First Chance." Next to this, and separated by two or three acres of weedy vacancy from the corners where the population centred thickest, stood-if one may so predicate of a building which leaned in seven directions-the house of Mr. Robert Skillett, the proprietor of the saloon. Both buildings were shut up as tight as their state of repair permitted. As they were furthest to the east, they formed ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington



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



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