meronymy
/mɪˈrɒ.nɪ.mɪ/
meronymy noun: the relationship of being a constituent part or member of something; a system of meronyms.
Noun
meronymy (countable and uncountable, plural meronymies)
- The relationship of being a constituent part or member of something; a system of meronyms.
- 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...1995, Jürgen Handke, The Structure of the Lexicon: Human Versus Machine, page 90
- 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
Examples of meronymy in a sentence
- This relationship of meronymy is controversial for various reasons.1995, Jürgen Handke, The Structure of the Lexicon: Human Versus Machine, page 90:
- 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 of meronymy
Antonyms
Forms of meronymy
| plural | meronymies |
|---|
Origin of meronymy
From mero- + -onymy (from Ancient Greek μέρος (méros, “part”) + ὄνομα (ónoma, “name”)); compare meronym.
Words formed from meronymy
Questions about meronymy
- What does meronymy mean?
- Meronymy means the relationship of being a constituent part or member of something; a system of meronyms.
- How do you use meronymy in a sentence?
- This relationship of meronymy is controversial for various reasons.
- What part of speech is meronymy?
- Meronymy is a noun.
- How do you pronounce meronymy?
- Meronymy is pronounced /mɪˈrɒ.nɪ.mɪ/ (UK).
- What is the plural of meronymy?
- The plural of meronymy is meronymies.
Words near meronymy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: meronymy (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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Cite this entry: “meronymy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/meronymy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.