antepraedicamentum

Latin[edit]

From ante- (“before”) +‎ praedicō (“declare, predicate”) +‎ -mentum (noun suffix), i.e. “that which is before predication”.

(modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /an.te.pre.di.kaˈmen.tum/, [än̪t̪epred̪ikäˈmɛn̪t̪um]

antepraedicāmentum n (genitive antepraedicāmentī); second declension

(Ecclesiastical Latin, philosophy) A fundamental category of logic that is necessary to establish the possibility of any predication.
- 1665, Livio Rabesano da Montorsio, Cursus philosophicus ad mentem doctoris subtilis Joannis Duns Scoti Ordinis Minorum […] , page 307:
  Intentum Aristotelis in duobus his Capitulis, est declarare tertium Antepraedicamentum, quod continet duas regulas, quarum prior ponitur in tertio capite; & incepit ibi.
  Aristotle’s intention in these two sections is to demonstrate the third antepraedicamentum, which involves two rules, of which the first is placed in the third chapter and begins here.

Applied specifically to the first three chapters of Aristotle’s Categories in scholastic theology, and traditionally enumerated as the distinctions between univocity and equivocality, complexity and simplicity, substance and accident, and genus and differentia.