Meronymy
Meronymy (from Greek meros = "part" and onoma = "name") is a semantic relation used in linguistics. A meronym denotes a constituent part of, or a member of something. That is,
- “X” is a meronym of “Y” if Xs are parts of Y(s), or
- “X” is a meronym of “Y” if Xs are members of Y(s).
For example, "finger" is a meronym of "hand" because a finger is part of a hand. Similarly, "wheels" is a meronym of "automobile".
Meronymy is the opposite of holonymy. A closely related concept is that of mereology, which specifically deals with part/whole relations and is used in logic. It is formally expressed in terms of first-order logic. A meronymy can also be considered a partial order.
A meronym means part of a whole. A word denoting a subset of what another word denotes is a hyponym.
In knowledge representation languages, meronymy is often expressed as "part-of".
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