What is "meronymy"

n. (context semantics English) The relationship of being a constituent part or member of something; a system of meronyms.

n. the semantic relation that holds between a part and the whole [syn: part to whole relation]

Meronymy (from Greek μέρος meros, "part" and ὄνομα onoma, "name") is a semantic relation specific to linguistics, distinct from the similar meronomy. 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 refers to a 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".