predicate
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Contents
English[edit]
Alternative forms[edit]
- prædicate (archaic)
Etymology 1[edit]
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.
Pronunciation[edit]
Noun[edit]
predicate (plural predicates)
- (grammar) The part of the sentence (or clause) which states something about the subject or the object of the sentence.
- In "The dog barked very loudly", the subject is "the dog" and the predicate is "barked very loudly".
- (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.
- A nullary predicate is a proposition. Also, an instance of a predicate whose terms are all constant — e.g., P(2,3) — acts as a proposition.
- A predicate can be thought of as either a relation (between elements of the domain of discourse) or as a truth-valued function (of said elements).
- A predicate is either valid, satisfiable, or unsatisfiable.
- There are two ways of binding a predicate's variables: one is to assign constant values to those variables, the other is to quantify over those variables (using universal or existential quantifiers). If all of a predicate's variables are bound, the resulting formula is a proposition.
- (computing) An operator or function that returns either true or false.
Derived terms[edit]
Translations[edit]
grammar
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logic
Etymology 2[edit]
From Latin predicātus, perfect passive participle of praedicō, from prae + dicō (“declare, proclaim”), from dicō (“say, tell”).
Pronunciation[edit]
Verb[edit]
predicate (third-person singular simple present predicates, present participle predicating, simple past and past participle predicated)
- (transitive) To announce or assert publicly.
- (transitive, logic) To state, assert.
- (transitive) To suppose, assume; to infer.
- 1859: There was a character about Madame Defarge, from which one might have predicated that she did not often make mistakes against herself in any of the reckonings over which she presided. — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
- 1881: 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. — Thomas Hardy, A Laodicean
- (transitive, originally US) To base (on); to assert on the grounds of.
- 1978: the law is what constitutes both desire and the lack on which it is predicated. — Michel Foucault, The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley (Penguin 1998, p. 81)
Translations[edit]
to announce or assert publicly
to base on, to assert on the grounds of
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External links[edit]
- predicate in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
- predicate in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
- predicate at OneLook Dictionary Search
Italian[edit]
Verb[edit]
predicate
