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Predicate   Listen
verb
Predicate  v. t.  (past & past part. predicated; pres. part. predicating)  
1.
To assert to belong to something; to affirm (one thing of another); as, to predicate whiteness of snow.
2.
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."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Predicate" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 act ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... The suggestion of the oriental dragon in this, as in other examples, is at once apparent, and the resemblance to certain conventional forms that come down to us from the earliest known period of Chinese art is truly remarkable. We cannot, of course, predicate identity of origin even upon absolute identity of appearances, but such correspondences are worthy of note, as they may in time accumulate to such an extent that the belief in a common origin will force ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes

... 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. Very few men are physical cowards. They will and do face anything. But a great many men are ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... 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? ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... that mysteriousness by 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 with the next that ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... in the imperative mood, having the following sentence or idea for its object. "If a pound of sugar cost ten cents, what will ten pounds cost?" Give, grant, allow, suppose, (the fact,) one pound cost, etc. In this case the supposition which stands as a predicate—one pound of sugar cost ten cents, is the object of if—the thing to be allowed, supposed, or granted, and from which the conclusion as to the cost of ten pounds ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... constitution, together with the general physical and chemical properties of compounds—in other words, given such knowledge of the element or compound as may be learned in a laboratory—does such knowledge afford us any clew whereby to predicate the probable action of the element or of the compound respectively on the living body? The researches of Blake, Rabuteau, Richet, Bouchardat, Fraser, and Crum-Brown were discussed, the results of their observations being that at present we ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various

... someone when we say that he possesses prestige; but our statement is not clear, and the predicate cannot be distinguished from the subject. Of what is analysable, well-known, commonplace, or what we succeed in understanding thoroughly, in attaining or imitating, we do not say ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... 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?' ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

... masterpiece of words. Words, sir, not facts. What I want to know is at whom—not at what, at whom—you were firing? I thought once that Aaron Burr was your mark. But he's too light metal—a mere buccaneer! That broadside of yours would predicate a general foe—and I'm damned if I wouldn't ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... 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 ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... consciousness: 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

... of white men must be proven 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 ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... bell! are you ready?" asked Winnie, stretching her lazy little form and rising reluctantly from the cosy corner; "now for a long, long lecture on subject and predicate, ugh! How I do hate lessons, to be sure;" and Miss Blake, parting the tapestried curtains, stepped along the hall ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... I shall never tire of emphasizing a small, terse fact, which is unwillingly recognized by these credulous minds—namely, that a thought comes when "it" wishes, and not when "I" wish; so that it is a PERVERSION of the facts of the case to say that the subject "I" is the condition of the predicate "think." ONE thinks; but that this "one" is precisely the famous old "ego," is, to put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not an "immediate certainty." After all, one has even gone too far with this ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... 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

... 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 strenuous ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... transmitted by oral tradition. But they have to do 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 these legends may mean ...
— Japan • David Murray

... the first 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 comes of it. And ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... these qualities, however, are present with it, it will not be the one. Or may we not say that all things subsist in the one according to the one? And that both these subsist in it, and such other things as we predicate of it, as, for instance, the most simple, the most excellent, the most powerful, the preserver of all things, and the good itself? If these things, however, are thus true of the one, it will thus also ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor

... finite 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 ...
— Parmenides • Plato

... tells me that the term Magnets is coextensive with the term A B C, therefore of all Magnets I may predicate that they ...
— Ethics • Aristotle

... any grudging incapacity to appreciate new authors, but from a strong feeling that we are to guard the graves of the dead from encroachment, and their fames from vulgarization, that the "Atlantic" has been and will be sparing in its use of the word genius. One may safely predicate power, nicety of thought and language, a clear eye for scenery and character, and grace of poetic conception of a book, without being willing to say that it gives proof of genius. For genius is the shaping faculty, the power of using material in the best way, and may not work itself clear ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... when the American elm is most worthy of admiration. In summer those same arching branches are clothed and tipped with foliage of such elegance and delicacy as the form of the tree would seem to predicate. The leaf itself is ornate, its straight ribs making up a serrated and pointed oval form of the most interesting character. These leaves hang by slender stems, inviting the gentlest zephyr to start them to singing ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... compelled to dispel the darkness by means of fires; but such instances were rare and of short duration. Statements are sometimes made that specimens, usually flint implements, have been found far, possibly several hundred yards, within the cavern. Such objects do not predicate habitation at that distance; primitive explorers may have lost them. It has been pointed out, too, by Mr. De Lancey Gill, that a wounded animal, taking refuge in a cave and instinctively seeking its dark recesses, may carry in ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... 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 a region of ghosts and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... 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, to have defined before employing it. "Natura," in St. Thomas Aquinas, is ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... thought. Nature, as regarded by the light of modern science, will be the name of a cruel and wasteful, or at least of a purely neutral and indifferent power, or perhaps as merely an equivalent for the Unknowable, to which the conditions of our intellect prevent us from ever attaching any intelligible predicate. Others would say that in whatever terms we choose to speak of the mysterious darkness which surrounds our little island of comparative light, the emotion generated in a thoughtful mind by the contemplation ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... 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 predications, it remains for future discoveries of zoologist ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... Life and Energy, of which we can only say that IT IS. We cannot conceive of any time when it was not, for, if there was a time when no such Primary Energizing Life existed, what was there to energize it? So we are landed in a reductio ad absurdum which leaves no alternative but to predicate the Eternal Existence of an All-Originating ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward

... this case there is no danger of getting into a split 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

... usages of war, a strong battalion of pikes, drawn up in the fashion of the Lion of the North, the immortal Gustavus, would beat the Macedonian phalanx, of which I used to read in the Mareschal-College, when I studied in the ancient town of Bon-accord; and further, I will venture to predicate—" ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... it seems 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 ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... of the human race it is not rationally possible to predicate a typical generic characteristic of mind. A physical trait will endure down the generations, as witness the Hapsburg lip and the swarthy complexion of the Finch-Hattons, in the face of alliances from outside the races; ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... Somehow I 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 ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... "redistribution" of these entities. The value of such an explanation for scientific purposes depends altogether on how consistent and exact it is. Every "thing" must be interpreted as a "configuration," every "event" as a change of configuration, every predicate ascribed must be of a geometrical sort. Measured by these requirements of mechanics Spencer's attempt has lamentably failed. His terms are vagueness and ambiguity incarnate, and he seems incapable of keeping the mechanical point of view in ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... Human hypotheses predicate matter of Spirit and evil of good; hence these opposites must either cooperate or quarrel throughout time and eternity,—or until this impossible partnership is dissolved. If Spirit is the [25] lawgiver to matter, and good has the same ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... but he preserved sufficient lucidity to 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

... 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 [Greek] [33]—without quality and incomprehensible. That is to say the ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... unconcern, the perfect 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 about them, any more than a man of good sense ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... order 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, ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith

... 3: The fact that a particular predicate is applicable to one thing and less properly to another, does not prevent this latter from being simply better than the former: thus the knowledge of the blessed is more excellent than the knowledge of the wayfarer, although faith is more properly predicated of the latter knowledge, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... if 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 ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair

... 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 ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza

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

... 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 the monkey's hunger, or a man's understanding, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke

... 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, she refused ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

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

... at the Colonial Office, one need not estimate very highly his powers of initiative or imagination. It was Lord John Russell's lot, here as in Parliamentary Reform, to read with honest eyes the defects of the existing system, to initiate a great and useful change, and then to predicate finality {260} of an act, which was really only the beginning of greater changes. But in Canadian politics as in British, he must be credited with being better than his words, and with doing nothing to hinder a movement which he ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison

... given social practice does not necessarily entail sin. No poor little earthling, caught in the enormous grip of chance, and so swerved from the established customs of men, could possibly be guilty of that depth of vileness which the attitude of the world would seem to predicate ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... because since it is essentially the knowing 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

... 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 be applied. ...
— Meno • Plato

... Utopia of gallantry, to a 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 Horner, 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 ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... 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 ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... lunar atmosphere, it may be said, in a word, that even those who advocate the existence of vegetation and of clouds of dust or ice crystals on the moon do not predicate any greater amount, or greater density, of atmosphere than do those who consider the moon to be wholly dead and inert. Professor Pickering himself showed, from his observations, that the horizontal refraction of the lunar atmosphere, instead ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... asserted of it. Such propositions as the above are trivial, and would never be enunciated in real life except by an orator preparing the way for a piece of sophistry. They are called 'analytic' because the predicate is obtained by merely analysing the subject. Before the time of Kant it was thought that all judgements of which we could be certain a priori were of this kind: that in all of them there was a predicate which was only part of the subject of which it was ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell

... prejudice, and to keep up with the movement of our own country, and find out 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 ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... 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

... like a German sentence, with its predicate at the end. Trifling incidents occurred at haphazard, as it seemed, and I never guessed they were by way of making sense. Then, this morning, somewhat of the suddenest, came the verb ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... whole 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 substantial being. ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the worst of the joke, and may, therefore, with better grace tell the story, which, happily for my readers, is a very brief one. A custom prevailed in Mrs. Clanfrizzle's household, which from my unhappy ignorance of boarding-houses, I am unable to predicate if it belong to the genera at large, or this one specimen in particular, however, it is a sufficiently curious fact, even though thereby hang no tale, for my stating it here. The decanters on the dinner-table were never labelled, with their more appropriate designation ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever

... 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 bent her footsteps up and down the Long Gallery, where she ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... ordinary Sutras. Altogether different is the case of the two Mima/m/sa-sutras. There scarcely one single Sutra is intelligible without a commentary. The most essential words are habitually dispensed with; nothing is, for instance, more common than the simple ommission of the subject or predicate of a sentence. And when here and there a Sutra occurs whose words construe without anything having to be supplied, the phraseology is so eminently vague and obscure that without the help derived from a commentary we should be unable to make out to what ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... 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 ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton

... of evil may puzzle us;—its use no Christian can deny. A sensual philosophy may shrink from it, in all its aspects, and retreat into a morbid skepticism or a timid submission. If we predicate mere happiness as "our being's end and aim," there is no explanation of evil. From this point of view, there is an ambiguity in nature,—a duality in every object, which we cannot solve. The throne of infinite light and love casts over the ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin

... ideal of perfect 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 ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... be perceived by sense, but they are names, and cannot be defined. When we assign to them some predicate, they first begin to have a meaning (onomaton sumploke logou ousia). This seems equivalent to saying, that the individuals of sense become the subject of knowledge when they are regarded as they are in nature ...
— Theaetetus • Plato

... less degree by 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 ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... think of 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 ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... 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

... persuaded the Misses Emmering and Lutzer, and the Messrs. Wild, Cicimara, and your Frederick to perform some music at the honoured man's house; almost from beginning to end the performance was deserving of the predicate "parfait." I never heard the quartet from Moses better sung; but Miss Gladkowska sang "O quante lagrime" at my farewell concert at Warsaw with much more expression. Wild was in excellent voice, and I acted in a ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... founded it. Here, sir, have I not an occasion of some little complaint? If you really thought that the gospels were, none of them, written in the life time of the apostles, and considered it safe to predicate an argument on this ground, why should you withhold the proof of this fact? Why did you not inform me of the authority by which your argument is supported in your own mind? And furthermore, why do you try to get away from the argument as stated in its first form, ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou

... a Nominative, especially after than or as; b Nominative who and whoever; c Predicate nominative; d Objective; e Objective with infinitive; f Possessive; g Possessive with gerund; h Possession by inanimate objects; i Agreement of pronouns 51. Number: a Each, every one, etc.; b Those ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever

... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... it be to confound the ignorant and astonish the wise. To call the homogeneous basis of an egg "blastima," and its germinal point a "blastid," is all well enough in its way; but it adds no new knowledge, nor additional wealth of language, wherewith to predicate vital theories, whether they relate to the progeny of a hen-coop or the lair of a ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... he interrupted, thus cutting out the predicate of her rhetorical sentence, "you surely couldn't have thought a dentist's fee of thirty francs would have put ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... 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 ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... energy of science from forgotten and buried ages. The deductions to be drawn from it, I leave to those who have a taste for the speculative, neither believing in, nor quarrelling with the theory which they may predicate upon it." ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... 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 identity between the period of rotation ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... "But I certainly differ from those who maintain that Sirius recedes from us. I say that he approaches. The principles of a body so enlightened must be those of progress." Then addressing Graham in English, he added, "there will be a mulling in this fogified planet some day, I predicate. Sirius is a keener!" ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of passion as he noted Sir Julian's look of evident admiration, and jealousy for a moment swept the young lord's heart, and he cursed in thought the wicked feeling that in connection with his noble friend could predicate of naught but the foul fiends. Indeed, so open were Sir Julian's glances that the maid herself became confused and said, with ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... steeping himself in an infusion of meaningless words and figures and sentences and forms, which he must learn backward and forward and diagonally, so that he could repeat them awake and asleep in order to predicate his correlation to a point where remembering the ordinary facts of life, such as names, addresses, and telephone numbers, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... heard of those imaginary engineering hopes so long that I begin to believe them vague, and that we shall yet for a few generations measure the power applied by the number of pounds of coal consumed. From past experiences and present indications we can predicate nothing with more certainty of fuel than that it will indefinitely increase in price. I am satisfied, therefore, that with all of the capabilities of steam it can never be applied to general ocean transportation; first, because undesirable; ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey

... we attribute the honor of this visit?" says Algy, turning away from the window to meet her, and setting her a chair. Bobby gives her a kiss, and the Brat a lump of taffy, concerning which it would be invidious to predicate which were the stickier; so exceedingly adhesive ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

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

... surprised by the disappearance of the sun behind the hill; and the question now arose whether it would be advisable to call upon Viviette that night. There was little doubt that she knew of his coming; but more than that he could not predicate; and being entirely ignorant of whom she had around her, entirely in the dark as to her present feelings towards him, he thought it would be better to defer his visit ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... tenor of my discourse, I would find it difficult to say whether I should give them a good name or a bad—to speak more scientifically, and of course more clearly, whether I should characterise them by a predicate eulogistic, or a predicate dyslogistic. On the whole, I am content with my first idea, and continue to stick to the title of "The Book-Hunter," with all the more assurance that it has been tolerated, and even liked, by readers of the kind ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... is much moral evil in the world is undeniable. Are we therefore to predicate original depravity of man's heart and soul? But there is also much physical evil in the world,—pain, weakness, disease, decay, and death. Are we therefore to predicate original depravity of man's body? And this physical evil, ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... presentiment that she saw them all for the last time, and she received but a dead kind of comfort from being reminded by her friends that Brussels and Haworth were not so very far apart; that access from one place to the other was not so difficult or impracticable as her tears would seem to predicate; nay, there was some talk of one of Madame Heger's daughters being sent to her as a pupil, if she fulfilled her intention of trying to begin a school. To facilitate her success in this plan, should she ever engage in it, M. Heger gave her a kind of diploma, dated from, and sealed ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... with new 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, overthrow in such States,—a handful of soldiers and philosophers without a People! ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... 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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... below are used as predicate adjectives, not to form the pluperfect passive with erant. Translate, therefore, 'were covered.' not 'had ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.

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

... solitude, when her passion was working itself out to an end which might be good, should 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 evil ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... 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 is one of the instances ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... Frisian areas may readily be admitted. There are, of course, reasonable objections against it—the want of proof of Frisian character of the language of Ditmarsh being the chief. Still, the principle which would lead us to predicate of Suffolk what we had previously predicated of Norfolk and Essex, induces us to do the same with the district in question, and to argue that if Eydersted, to the North, and the parts between Bremen and Cuxhaven, to the South, were Frisian, ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham

... in this ghost that animates your world, This ethical ghost,—and I, you'll say, in reason,— Or sensuous beauty,—or in my secret self . . . Though as for that you put your faith in these, As much as I do—and then, forsaking reason,— Ascending, you would say, to intuition,— You predicate this ghost of yours, as well. Of course, you might have argued,—and you should have,— That no such deep appearance of design Could shape our world without entailing purpose: For can design exist without a purpose? Without conceiving mind? . . . We are like children Who find, upon the ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken

... It is hardly possible to predicate much about the environment as it affects art in America. The result of the climate, the temperament, and the mixture of nations in the production or non-production of painting in America cannot be accurately computed at this early stage of history. One thing ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... general results of a revision of an order to which a full tenth of all higher plants belong, furnish apt examples both of cautious criticism, conditional assent (as becomes the inaugurator of the quantification of the predicate), and of fruitful application of the new views to various problems concerning the classification and geographical distribution of plants. In his hands the hypothesis is turned at once to practical use as an instrument of investigation, as a means of interrogating Nature. In the result, no ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... 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 ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton

... 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 could feel no difficulty in the exercise of what it deems an unquestionable ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... part of the argument. For while what has just been said almost demonstrates the necessity of a Giver of Life from a kingdom outside the organic, the further facts point irresistibly to the conclusion that we must predicate more about the Giver of Life that we can of an ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell

... nor can be a square. It amounts to nothing more than the affirmation, that the same idea or thing is what it is; and it relates solely to the connection between one idea and another, or between one proposition and another, or between subject and predicate. This is "logical necessity;" we cannot, with our present laws of thought, conceive the thing to be otherwise ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... 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

... Broadway hotel, from which she was expelled at a very short notice by the proprietors in presence of a number of the guests. It is presumed that at present she is almost penniless, though no one can safely predicate at what place or in what guise she may appear hereafter. For an adventurer, like a cat, ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... pronounce, speak, declare, tell, articulate, recite, rehearse; state, assert, affirm, allege, aver, asseverate, predicate, cite; suppose, assume, presume. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... universe as one vast unity. Far beyond all things is God. Of God man can form no conception. Think, they would say, of all the exalted and wonderful and beautiful concepts you can imagine; then deny them. God is beyond. God is beyond being; you can conceive of being, and therefore to predicate being of God is to limit him. You cannot think of God; for, if you could think of God, God would be in relation with you; God is insusceptible of relation with man. He neither wills, nor thinks of man, nor can man think of him. A modern philosopher has summed up their ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... 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 ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... 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

... continuity of life," said he, in his most didactic manner, "none of us can predicate what opportunities of observation one may have from what we may call the spirit plane to the plane of matter. It surely must be evident to the most obtuse person" (here he glared a Summerlee) "that it is ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle

... of history with volcanic centres. Where the strife of nature has been fiercest, there by a strange coincidence the storm of human passion has been greatest. The geological history of a region is most frequently typical of its human history. We can predicate of a scene where the cosmical disturbance has been great,—where fire and flood have contended for the mastery, leaving the effects of their strife in deepening valleys and ascending hills,—that there man has had a strangely varied and eventful career. ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... Whether this meant that she was agreeably surprised to see me again, or whether it showed that she resented my turning up again so soon after she thought she was finally rid of me, I did not know. It does not do to predicate too much ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton

... independent ground, the Scriptural account of human morality—against such a theory, I say I must quote the words of our greatest living logician. "Language has no meaning for the words Just, Merciful, Benevolent" (he might have added truthful likewise) "save that in which we predicate them of our fellow creatures; and unless that is what we intend to express by them, we have no business to employ the words. If in affirming them of God we do not mean to affirm these very qualities, differing only as greater ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... of words consisting of a subject and predicate with their modifiers and forming a part of a sentence: a sentence ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton

... man is often called an "individual," the 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 ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... not the fiat of any political organization, even could its will be ascertained. In 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 begotten ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... of the problem was to explain away the attributes. Saadia says that the ascription of life, power and knowledge to God does not involve plurality in his essence. The distinction of three attributes is due to our limited mind and inadequate powers of expression. In reality the essence of which we predicate these attributes is one and simple. This solution did not seem thoroughgoing enough to Saadia's successors, and every one of the Jewish philosophers tried his hand at the problem. All agreed that the attributes cannot apply to God in the same signification ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... Maud's assistance. I have a great belief 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 important matter, ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... business; in other words, by their politico-economical situation. It is especially in the higher stages of civilization, that one bankrupt may easily drag numberless others down with him; and where the laws are bad or powerless, not even the wealthiest man can predicate his own solvency for any length of time in advance. One of the most important conditions of credit is the certainty that, if the debtor's good will to meet his obligations should fail, it shall be supplied by the compulsory process of the courts. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... light—what fearful obscurity! Heaven and Hell war in his soul! Strange visions traverse his intellect, throwing their lurid light into the vague depths of his heart. His power to love and feel seems boundless—his power to know almost at zero. What can he predicate even of himself, with his boundless desires for he knows not what—his fleeting emotions and insatiable wishes! Ah! if the language of poetry, of music, of the arts, came not to gift these passing images with external life, to fix them in the wildered consciousness, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... tender passion, or rather their 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; man finds it charming ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... 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

... 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

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

... "Perfect sanity would be impossible to predicate of any individual; doubtless there are perfectly sane persons, that is, sane at times, but to find them would be like finding the traditional needle. I suppose our good friend Willis would rank higher than the average, after all ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson

... thing 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 is both 'man' ...
— The Categories • Aristotle

... comprehended within infinity. There cannot 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 ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell

... God is a spirit. For if His spirituality is insisted on, it is rather to exclude from Him the grossness and limitation of matter, and to ascribe to Him a transcendental degree of whatever perfection our notion of spirit may involve, than to classify Him, or to predicate of Him that finite nature which we call a spirit. God is neither a spirit nor a body; but rather like Ndengei of the Fijians: "an impersonation of the abstract idea of eternal existence;" one who is to be "regarded as a deathless Being, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... structure of the 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 true in verse, where the poet, hemmed ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... syllogism there are three terms,—major, minor, and middle. The middle term is found in both the premises, but not in the conclusion. It is the link connecting the major and minor terms. The major term is usually the predicate of the major premise and the predicate of the conclusion. The minor term is the subject of the minor premise and the subject of the conclusion. "Men" is the middle term, "are mortal" the major term, and ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... good swinging pace, the stranger, in Rupert's clothes, leading the way by a neck, Philip beside him, and the other two behind. It was not a dark night, but a mist rolling inland from the sea—one of those white mists well known along the south coast, which predicate hot weather—enveloped them impenetrably ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas

... damaging accusation. There was no public denial from Mr. Clay. The press in his support had from the first treated the story as too ridiculous to be noticed other than by a flat denial; but the circumstances were sufficiently plausible to predicate such a slander, and the effect upon Mr. Clay was beginning to be felt seriously by his friends. In the mean time, rumors reached the popular ear that the proofs of its veracity were in the hands of General Jackson, whose popularity was running through the country with the warmth and ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... represented by a generic word. So elementary are idea and word alike that a person cannot have the one in mind without having the other ready and a-quiver on his tongue. Every person is master of both. But it is unsafe to predicate the person's acquaintance with the shades and phases of the idea, or with the corresponding discriminations in language. He may not know them at all, he may know them partially, he may know them through and through. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... working of the intellect, and of steadiness and gentleness in action, of smoothness and depth of voice, and of all rhythmical movement and of music in general, when these have a proper solemnity. Of all such actions we predicate not courage, but a name ...
— Statesman • Plato

... 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 would ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells

... upon but his own address to secure patronage and promotion,—nothing but his own merits to justify the countenance that his ingenuity should win. Without undue vanity, it is tolerably safe to say now that he was authorized by the existing state of things to confidently predicate his own ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... as the 'Other' or correlative of what is. Thus we get, in fact, four forms of existence: there is the Idea or Limiting (apart); there is the Negative or Unlimited (apart), there is the Union of the two (represented in language by subject and predicate), which as a whole is this frame of things as we know it; and fourthly, there is the Cause of the Union, which is God. And God is cause not only as the beginning of all things, but also as the measure and law ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall

... certain is to have a clear insight into the inseparability of the predicate from the subject (the matter from the form), and vice versa. This is a verbal definition,—a real definition of a thing absolutely known is impossible. I know a circle, when I perceive that the equality of all possible radii from the centre to ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... it may be true or not that we have a certain emotion, it 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 ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... do we mean by 'substance'? Here the reaction between his philosophy and his logic worked very unfortunately. In his logic, the fundamental type of affirmative proposition is the attribution of a predicate to a subject. Accordingly, amid the many current uses of the term 'substance' which he analyses, he emphasises its meaning as 'the ultimate substratum which is no ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead

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

... 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 ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... meaning of "I am well," and may be called a substitute for our verb "to be." By incorporating yalu with this expression, it makes it more emphatic, as, Yalu murrung nginyadhu, "Really I am well." Any adjective describing a human attribute may be taken as a predicate, as, good, bad, strong, sleepy, and employed with the modifications of the ...
— The Wiradyuri and Other Languages of New South Wales • Robert Hamilton Mathews

... particulars, about which we know nothing, and therefore had better say nothing, revolves in the Apostle's mind mainly round these two 'earthly' as contrasted with 'in the heavens'; and 'tabernacle,' or tent, as contrasted, first of all with a 'building,' and then with the predicate 'eternal.' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... the sweat stood on his brow he set about such preparations as were necessary—remembering also how long and kindly, and without pay or guerdon, he had served my mother, I began to see that here was something phenomenal; a man strange and beyond the ordinary, of whom it was impossible to predicate what he would do when ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... 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 ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... this doctrine, that there is not, and cannot be any such thing as sin. If man be not a free agent—if he be incapable of acting otherwise than as predetermined by Jehovah—he is incapable of either virtue or vice. It would be as reasonable to predicate virtue or vice of the flux and reflux of the tides, or the circulation of the blood, as of man or ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson

... that language is 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 ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... 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, or shall ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... over long ago.' I answered, 'The contest concerning Douglas's filiation was over long ago; but the contest now is, who shall have the estate.' Then, assuming the air of 'an antient sage philosopher', I proceeded thus: 'Were I to PREDICATE concerning him, I should say, the contest formerly was, What IS he? The contest now is, What HAS he?' 'Right,' replied Mr Harris, smiling, 'you have done with QUALITY, and have got ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... thing this honour in all 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 hazarded ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... 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 same ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... figure and colour like colour; yet we all know that there is great variety among figures and colours. Protarchus does not see the drift of this remark; and Socrates proceeds to ask how he can have a right to attribute a new predicate (i.e. 'good') to pleasures in general, when he cannot deny that they are different? What common property in all of them does he mean to indicate by the term 'good'? If he continues to assert that there is some trivial sense in which pleasure is one, Socrates may retort ...
— Philebus • Plato

... continuity and of the differential calculus." It seems to me that even without the help of the differential calculus, we can, with the help of logic and grammar, put a stop to this argument. Boy is the subject, stature looks like a subject, but is merely a predicate, and should have been treated as such by Mr. Darwin. If a boy arrives by insensible graduation or growth at the stature of man, the man is substantially the same as the boy. His stature may be different, the color of ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... is generally held by those whose views are in any degree derived from Hegel. It may be illustrated by the following passage from Lossky, "The Intuitive Basis of Knowledge" (Macmillan, 1919), p. 268: "Strictly speaking, a false judgment is not a judgment at all. The predicate does not follow from the subject S alone, but from the subject plus a certain addition C, WHICH IN NO SENSE BELONGS TO THE CONTENT OF THE JUDGMENT. What takes place may be a process of association of ideas, ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

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

... Bazaine capitulates, and the armies of the Loire and of Lyons are only the figments of their own brains, it may be that they will bow to what they will call destiny. "Heaven has declared against us," is an expression that I already hear frequently uttered. It is indeed as impossible to predicate here, as it is in London, what may be the mood of this fickle and impulsive population a week hence. All I can positively say is, that at the present moment they are in "King Cambyses' vein." We ought not to judge a foreign nation by our own standard, but it is impossible not to re-echo ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... fear (and this we know not to be the case).—In conclusion we remark that in defining right knowledge as 'that which has for its antecedent another entity, different from its own antecedent non-existence,' you do not give proof of very eminent logical acuteness; for what sense has it to predicate of an entity that it is different from nonentity?—For all these reasons Inference also does not prove an ajna which is a positive entity. And that it is not proved by Scripture and arthpatti, will be shown later on. ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... priesthood profess faith 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 ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... of these larger analogies," my father would continue, "why are we not further permitted to conclude that there is a more intimate and minute correlation. Why can not we predicate that under similar climatic and atmospheric vicissitudes, with a very probably similar or identical origin with our globe, this planet Mars, now burning red in the evening skies, possesses life, an organic retinue of forms like our own, or at least involving such ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap



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



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