Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To base or establish (a statement or action, for example).
  • intransitive verb To state or affirm as an attribute or quality of something.
  • intransitive verb To carry the connotation of; imply.
  • intransitive verb Logic To make (a term or expression) the predicate of a proposition.
  • intransitive verb To proclaim or assert; declare.
  • intransitive verb To make a statement or assertion.
  • noun Grammar One of the two main constituents of a sentence or clause, modifying the subject and including the verb, objects, or phrases governed by the verb, as opened the door in Jane opened the door or is very sleepy in The child is very sleepy.
  • noun Logic That part of a proposition that is affirmed or denied about the subject. For example, in the proposition We are mortal, mortal is the predicate.
  • adjective Grammar Of or belonging to the predicate of a sentence or clause.
  • adjective Stated or asserted; predicated.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To declare; assert; affirm; specifically, to affirm as an attribute or quality of something; attribute as a property or characteristic.
  • To assert, as a proposition or argument, upon given grounds or data; found; hence, to base, as an action, upon certain grounds or security: as, to predicate a loan.
  • Predicated; belonging to a predicate; constituting a part of what is predicated or asserted of anything; made, through the instrumentality of a verb, to qualify its subject, or sometimes its direct object: thus, in the following sentences the italicized words are predicate: he is an invalid; he is ill; it made him ill; they elected him captain.
  • noun That which is predicated or said of a subject in a proposition; in grammar, the word or words in a proposition which express what is affirmed or denied of the subject; that part of the sentence which is not the subject. See proposition.
  • noun A class name; a title by which a person or thing may be known, in virtue of belonging to a class.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To affirm something of another thing; to make an affirmation.
  • adjective Predicated.
  • noun (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.
  • noun (Gram.) The word or words in a proposition which express what is affirmed of the subject.
  • transitive verb To assert to belong to something; to affirm (one thing of another).
  • transitive verb U.S. To found; to base.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun grammar The part of the sentence (or clause) which states something about the subject or the object of the sentence.
  • noun logic A term of a statement, where the statement may be true or false depending on whether the thing referred to by the values of the statement's variables has the property signified by that (predicative) term.
  • noun computing An operator or function that returns either true or false.
  • verb transitive To announce or assert publicly.
  • verb transitive, logic To state, assert.
  • verb transitive To suppose, assume; to infer.
  • verb transitive, originally US To base (on); to assert on the grounds of.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb involve as a necessary condition of consequence; as in logic
  • verb make the (grammatical) predicate in a proposition
  • verb affirm or declare as an attribute or quality of
  • noun one of the two main constituents of a sentence; the predicate contains the verb and its complements
  • noun (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

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Late Latin praedicāre, praedicāt-, from Latin, to proclaim : prae-, pre- + dicāre, to proclaim; see deik- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle French predicate (French prédicat), from post-classical Late Latin praedicatum ("thing said of a subject"), a noun use of the neuter past participle of praedicare ("proclaim"), as Etymology 2, below.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin predicātus, perfect passive participle of praedicō, from prae + dicō ("declare, proclaim"), from dicō ("say, tell").

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