谓语， is usually the verb/ or verbs in a sentence ，to describe the action performed by the subject， or to describe the state of the subject. eg: I (love) food/ eating food, love is 谓语 I （am） a man。 am is 谓语 he （was caught） yesterday。 was caught is the 谓语 I （won't hurt ）you， won't hurt is 谓语

Ah... grammar. Most Chinese don't know a thing about Chinese grammar! That is painful and actually useless (unless you are a Chinese linguist). I think even for Chinese learners they don't have to learn the grammar, even though I learned English grammar (which I think is less chaotic than Chinese grammar) when I was learning English.

Well, most of the Chinese native speaker don't know the term “述语”, because we seldom or even never use it to discribe our grammar. But in fact, especially after learning Arabic, I found that “述语” is very common in Chinese Mandarin. It is like the khabar in arabic. You can simply regard “述语” as the comment to the subject in a sentence. For example, 我的书在桌子上(My book is on the desk.) . From this sentence you can see that there's no "to be" or its equivelant in the Chinese version. So we cannot be convinced by the saying that the structure of this sentence is S+V+O which is the basic grammar structure that many modern grammar books tell us. Then we can say that "书" is the subject, and “在桌子上” is the "述语“. Another example, 我读过这本书(I have read this book). 我 is subject, 读 is the verb, and 书 is the object. Then 读过这本书 could be regarded as the ”述语“ for 我, because it is kind of comment to 我.

interesting question! As of my understading, these two definitions of the components of a sentence, represents two completely different grammatical methodology in analysing/categorizing the components of a sentence... the “谓语” representing the older one which is also not as scientfic/accurate as the modern one using "述语"... however, to common user, even us native Chinese speaker, those means pretty much the same... and if you are not living as a scholar of Chinese language study, my suggestion is that you can temporarily treat them as the same... or dig further... "述语" may contain Verb and its compliments, quote"I decided what to do" ,,, in this case given by collins... the old grammatical analysis would say that the "decided" is "谓语"... whereas in modern Chinese grammatical understanding, the whole phrase“decided what to do” comprise the "述语"... ...gave it my best, hope not making it more confusing... ^^

wow... what is 述语 ？I don't know, either!