1. in linguistics, the part of a sentence or clause that is not the subject but asserts a property, action, or condition of the subject. The predicate of a sentence may range from a single intransitive verb (as in She smiled) to a long and complex construction. See also complement.

2. in logic, a property or characteristic that is attributed to the subject of a proposition. In Aristotelian and Scholastic logic (see Scholasticism), a predicate is a second term that is stated to have a particular relation to the subject of a proposition, as, for example, man in Edward is a man or mortal in Man is mortal. —predicative adj.