Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
predicatively

predicatively

1 9.3
An adjective comes after a verb to describe the subject, as in 'The child is asleep'
  • adverb
  • /prɪˈdɪkətɪvli/
  • Specialized
: de manera predicativa
  • The word 'happy' can be used predicatively in a sentence like 'She is happy', where it describes the subject.

Examples

  • When an adjective describes the subject of a sentence, it is functioning predicatively rather than attributively.

  • The insights of historians and phenomenologists of religion were helpful in offering categories, but something was clearly lacking in my understanding because I was still operating predicatively, conceptually, and judgmentally.

    Academic text (2007)

  • In grammatical analysis, the adjective is used predicatively when it follows a linking verb.

Surface Forms

predicatively positive

Morphology

predicatively = predicative (transparent) = predicative + ly

Formed by adding the productive adverbial suffix '-ly' to the adjective 'predicative', yielding 'in a predicative manner'.

Etymology

Predicatively comes from the word predicate, which originally meant 'to say' about something and shares the same root as common words like dictate and dictionary. So to use an adjective predicatively is to 'say' something about the subject in the part of the sentence that gives more information, like 'The sky is blue'.