praedicamentum

Praedicamentum is a Latin philosophical term used in Aristotelian and Scholastic logic to denote a category or predicable of being—the basic kinds of predication that can be affirmed about a subject. The word comes from praedicare, to predicate, and in ancient and medieval sources it refers to the general ways in which a term can be said of something.

In Aristotle’s Categories, a praedicamentum describes the form of predication rather than its content, organizing propositions by the kind of thing being spoken about. In the medieval Latin tradition, praedicamenta became technical labels for the fundamental classes of predication employed in logical analysis and disputation. Following Porphyry’s Isagoge, logicians arranged terms into these broad classes to ask what can be said of a subject and how such predicates relate to it.

The exact enumeration of praedicamenta varies by author, but common categories include substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, and modes such as action and passion; some accounts add states, habits, or other predicates. The goal is to classify predication by form, not content, to illuminate how different kinds of things are said to exist or occur.

Praedicamenta are primarily of historical interest today, serving as a key point of reference in studies of Aristotle’s categories and medieval logic. They illustrate how scholars historically organized language, ontology, and reasoning prior to the development of modern symbolic logic. In contemporary philosophy, the term is mainly referenced in historical or textual discussions.