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Meronymie

Meronymie, or meronymy in English, is a semantic relation between a term that denotes a part and a term that denotes the whole. It is the part–whole relation in lexical semantics. The converse relation is holonymy: if X is the whole of Y, then Y is a meronym of X.

Examples illustrate the relation clearly. A wheel is a meronym of a car, a leaf is a

Two common subtypes are recognized. Part–whole meronymy describes physical parts that constitute a whole (wheel, door,

Meronymy is used in lexicography, natural language processing, and cognitive science to model part–whole structures and

meronym
of
a
tree,
and
a
finger
is
a
meronym
of
a
hand.
Conversely,
car
is
a
holonym
of
wheel,
tree
is
a
holonym
of
leaf,
and
hand
is
a
holonym
of
finger.
Meronymy
can
also
occur
across
different
domains,
such
as
a
door
as
a
part
of
a
house
or
a
page
as
a
part
of
a
book.
engine).
Member–collection
meronymy
describes
members
of
a
group
or
set
(a
player
is
a
meronym
of
a
team;
a
committee
member
is
a
meronym
of
the
committee).
Some
classifications
also
include
substance
or
material
meronymy,
where
a
thing
is
described
by
the
material
it
is
made
from
(wood
of
a
table;
steel
of
a
car).
to
support
tasks
such
as
sense
disambiguation,
ontology
engineering,
and
information
retrieval.
It
is
often
contrasted
with
hyponymy,
which
expresses
a
kind-of
relationship
rather
than
a
part-of
relationship.