meronymy

plural meronymies

1. countableuncountablehuman sciencesThe relationship of being a constituent part or member of something; a system of meronyms.

   But whereas hyponymy is a member–class relation, reflecting a taxonomy or conceptual hierarchy, meronymy is a part–whole relation, reflecting the existence of complex structures in concrete reality.

   1999, Sylvia Adamson, “7: Literary Language”, in Roger Lass, editor, The Cambridge History of the English Language: Volume III: 1476-1776, page 564

   2 more examples

   This relationship of meronymy is controversial for various reasons. First, there are several types of meronymy, such as functional meronymy, where one concept is a functional part of another (e.g. FINGER-HAND) or more general part-whole relations, where the part and the whole exist as a continuous entity (e.g. FLAME-FIRE). Secondly, there are diverging opinions as to whether meronymy should be treated as a semantic primitive in the sense of s[yn]onymy, antonymy, and hyponymy.

   1995, Jürgen Handke, The Structure of the Lexicon: Human Versus Machine, page 90

   Possession, like meronymy, is described in English (and equivalently in other languages) with the verb to have (A millionaire has money) and the line between possession and part-having is fuzzy at best.[…]Priss (1998) suggests that meronymy might be formalized as an attribution relation, such that has-a-handle-for-a-part would be an attribute of hammer and cup. Thus, the case for separating attribution and possession from meronymy is not strong.

   2003, M. Lynne Murphy, Semantic Relations and the Lexicon: Antonymy, Synonymy and Other Paradigms, pages 233–234

   Synonyms: partonym · Antonyms: holonymy