Word.ws English Dictionary

mereology

/ˌmɪəɹiˈɒləd͡ʒi/

mereology noun: the discipline which deals with the relationship of parts with their respective wholes.

Noun

mereology (countable and uncountable, plural mereologies)

  1. The discipline which deals with the relationship of parts with their respective wholes.
    • In [13] a new paradigm for approximate reasoning, rough mereology, has been introduced. Rough mereology is based on the notion of a part to a degree and thus falls in the province of part–based mereologies.2001, Lech Polkowski, Spatial Reasoning via Rough Sets, Wojciech Ziarko, Yiyu Yao (editors), Rough Sets and Current Trends in Computing: 2nd International Conference RSCTC 2000, Revised Papers...
    • Let us begin with mereology. This is often defined as the theory of the part-whole relation, but such a definition is misleading. It suggests that mereology has something to say about both parts and wholes, which is not true. As we shall see in Sec. 2, the notion of a whole goes beyond the...2007, Achille C. Varzi, Antony Galton (second reader), Chapter 15: Spatial Reasoning and Ontology: Parts, Wholes, and Locations, Marco Aiello, Ian Pratt-Hartmann, Johan van Benthem (editors)...

Forms of mereology

pluralmereologies

Origin of mereology

Coined by Stanisław Leśniewski in 1927, from Ancient Greek μέρος (méros, “part”) + -logy (“study, discussion, science”).

Words formed from mereology

Questions about mereology

What does mereology mean?
Mereology means the discipline which deals with the relationship of parts with their respective wholes.
What part of speech is mereology?
Mereology is a noun.
How do you pronounce mereology?
Mereology is pronounced /ˌmɪəɹiˈɒləd͡ʒi/.
What is the plural of mereology?
The plural of mereology is mereologies.

Words near mereology in the dictionary

  1. mereological
  2. mereologically
  3. mereologies
  4. mereologist
  5. mereologists
  6. mereology
  7. Mereon
  8. mereotopological
  9. mereotopologies
  10. mereotopology
  11. merer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mereology (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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