In mathematics and logic, a higher-order logic is a form of predicate logic that is distinguished from first-order logic by additional quantifiers and, sometimes, stronger semantics. Higher-order logics with their standard semantics are more expressive, but their model-theoretic properties are less well-behaved than those of first-order logic.

The term "higher-order logic", abbreviated as HOL, is commonly used to mean higher-order simple predicate logic. Here "simple" indicates that the underlying type theory is the theory of simple types, also called the simple theory of types (see Type theory). Leon Chwistek and Frank P. Ramsey proposed this as a simplification of the complicated and clumsy ramified theory of types specified in the Principia Mathematica by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell. Simple types is nowadays sometimes also meant to exclude polymorphic and dependent types.