Predicated

Predicated is the past participle of the verb predicate and can function as an adjective or as part of a verb phrase meaning “based on” or “asserted of.” In scholarly usage, the term is most commonly tied to the idea of predication—the relationship by which a property or relation is asserted of a subject.

In logic and philosophy, predication refers to the act of ascribing a property to a subject within a proposition. For example, in the proposition “All humans are mortal,” the predicate “mortal” is predicated of the subject “humans.” Predication is central to the study of how statements express truth-apt content about entities.

In linguistics and grammar, predication describes how a clause connects a subject with a predicate, such as a property, action, or state described by the predicate. Predication illuminates how languages encode who or what is being described and what is being asserted about them, often via a copular verb or through syntactic structure.

In computer science, predication refers to predicated execution, a technique used to improve performance by attaching a condition to instructions. Predicated instructions are executed only if their predicate evaluates true, reducing branches and mispredictions in pipelines on some architectures.

The term predicated thus spans multiple disciplines but generally conveys the idea of attributing a property or relation to a subject, or of basing statements, decisions, or computations on a specified condition. See also predicate, predication, predicate logic, and predicated execution.