yleistermihin

Yleistermihin is a coined term in linguistics and information science used to describe the practice of mapping or replacing domain-specific terms with more general terms to improve cross-domain understanding and interoperability. The concept arises from the need to bridge terminologies across disciplines and languages, especially in multilingual corpora, knowledge graphs, and terminological databases.

The word combines Finnish yleis- 'general' and termi 'term,' with the suffix -hin forming a noun; as a neologism, it is used in academic discussions rather than as an established linguistic category.

In practice, yleistermihin involves establishing rules or criteria to select appropriate general terms, balancing granularity and precision. It may be performed manually by terminologists or automatically through algorithms that assess semantic similarity, context, and usage frequency. The result is a layer of abstraction that can be used to index, search, and align information across domains.

Common applications include improving retrieval in multilingual search, enabling cross-disciplinary data integration, and supporting educational materials that require simplification.

Critics point to potential loss of nuance, risk of overgeneralization, and the challenge of maintaining up-to-date general terms that still capture essential domain distinctions. Practical implementations require governance, review processes, and alignment with existing vocabularies.

Related concepts include generalization, abstraction, controlled vocabularies, taxonomy and ontology alignment, and cross-domain information retrieval.