Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use ontology in a sentence

25 example sentences · noun

Ontology means the branch of metaphysics that addresses the nature or essential characteristics of being and of things that exist; the study of being qua being. Example: “If English were a causal ontology, you could not say or write 'I ate my house', because you cannot eat a house.”

Examples of ontology by meaning

nounIn a subject view, or a world view, the set of conceptual or material things or classes of things that are recognised...

  • Then ghosts are in your ontology, along with tables and chairs and songs and vacations, and snow, and all the rest.2017, Daniel C. Dennett, From Bacteria to Bach and Back, →ISBN
  • Research centered on ontology and security argues that the far-right utilizes cultural anxieties to recruit members of dominant cultures within a society who feel left behind in some way.2020 May 3, Julien Morein, “Murdoch Murdoch: A Case Study in Threats to Ontological Security in Far-Right Propaganda”, in Arcadia...

nounThe theory of a particular philosopher or school of thought concerning the fundamental types of entity in the universe.

  • The answer to the controversial question of whether Aristotle's ontology includes non-substantial particulars, then, is that it does.2000, C. D. C. Reeve, Substantial Knowledge: Aristotle's Metaphysics, Hackett Publishing, page 97

More sentences with ontology

  • If English were a causal ontology, you could not say or write 'I ate my house', because you cannot eat a house.From the entry causal ontology
  • In my view, Pandeism and Panendeism imply nonetheless the same ontology.2017, Bernardo Kastrup, “The Idealist Interpretation of Pandeism”, in Knujon Mapson, editor, Pandeism: An Anthology, →ISBN, page 43. From the entry panendeism
  • Amergent music is a generative style developed to complement the innate dynamics or ontology of technoetic environments.2014, Norbert Herber, “Musical Behavior and Amergence in Technoetic and Media Arts”, in Karen Collins, Bill Kapralos, Holly Tessler…. From the entry technoetic
  • Necessitism is the view that necessarily everything is necessarily something (so ontology is non-contingent).2013, Timothy Williamson, Modal Logic as Metaphysics. From the entry contingentism
  • Analogously, permanentism is the view that always everything is always something (so ontology is unchanging).2013, Timothy Williamson, Modal Logic as Metaphysics. From the entry contingentism
  • Systemism somehow entails dynamicism (or process ontology), because every interaction causes changes, both internal and external.2013, Stephen Chrisomalis, André Costopoulos, Human Expeditions: Inspired by Bruce Trigger, page 152. From the entry dynamicism
  • We favor hunter-tatherer ontology, based on empirical evidence, rather than armchair ontology based on permutations and combinations.2013, Katherine Munn, Barry Smith, Applied Ontology: An Introduction, page 77. From the entry algebraism
  • The primary direction or derivation of existence from faith's facticity is possible through the codirection of ontology.2011, Aubrey L. Glazer, A New Physiognomy of Jewish Thinking, →ISBN. From the entry codirection
  • In order to create a stable fuzzy ontology certain checks for accuracy and fulfillness must be done.2010, Vassil Sgurev, Mincho Hadjiski, Intelligent Systems: From Theory to Practice. From the entry fulfillness
  • On the whole, Dyke’s book is an important contribution to debates about philosophical methodology, truthmaking, and ontology.2008 August 27, Kevin Dewan, “Review of Heather Dyke, Metaphysics and the Representational Fallacy”, in Erkenntnis, volume 69, number 2…. From the entry truthmaking
  • This ontology, however, leads to our second problem: the Overdetermination Argument (OA) for eliminativism.2007 December 8, Patrick Toner, “Emergent substance”, in Philosophical Studies, volume 141, number 3, →DOI. From the entry eliminativism
  • The Knowledge Interchange Format is a proposed standard for the specification and interchange of ontologies.2000, William J. Raynor, Jr., The International Dictionary of Artificial Intelligence, page 155. From the entry Knowledge Interchange Format
  • We have moved out of fannish lore and into questions of ontology.1981 August, Gary Deindorfer, “Group Sainthood”, in Boonfark, number 5, page 34. From the entry fanlore
  • Summing up, the designed buildings' generic ontology intends to establish a generalist organization for edified structures, based on the CityGML standard.2016, Telmo Adão, Luís Magalhães, Emanuel Peres, Ontology-based Procedural Modelling of Traversable Buildings Composed by Arbitrary…. From the entry edified
  • As the success of GO shows, ontologies are useful in omics research with both taxonomic and partonomic hierarchies.2015 July 1, Asami Suzuki et al., “Development of an Ontology for Periodontitis”, in Journal of Biomedical Semantics, volume 6, →DOI. From the entry partonomic
  • Indeed, many of those who accept an ontology which includes properties vehemently deny the existence of even exemplified haecceities.1986, Gary Rosenkrantz, “On Objects Totally Out of this World”, in Rudolf Haller, editor, Non-existence and Predication (Grazer…. From the entry haecceity
  • Doesn't reflectionism itself imply that ontology is somehow prior?1985, Johan van der Auwera, Language and Logic: A speculative and condition-theoretic study, page 17. From the entry reflectionism
  • Defining pantheism as an ontology alongside analogism, it may be noted, requires an emendation to Descola's four ontologies: naturalism, totemism, animism and analogism.2022, Olaf Almqvist, Chaos, Cosmos and Creation in Early Greek Theogonies. From the entry analogism
  • The modern ontology, since the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment, is an idea of the world as a knowable, controllable, dominatable place.2009, David Cayley, Ideas on the Nature of Science, page 89. From the entry dominatable
  • At this point it might be noted that Copenhagenists are sometimes characterized as hard-nosed positivists who renounce all physical ontologies for QT except sense data.2009, Salvator Cannavo, Quantum Theory: A Philosopher's Overview, page 53. From the entry Copenhagenist
  • Hayles argues for a posthumanistic ontology of cognition that decentres human cognition in favour of a more extensible ontology that can be applied to all living and nonliving agencies.2024, Blair Attard-Frost, “1: Queering intelligence: A theory of intelligence as performance and a critique of individual and artificial…. From the entry posthumanistic
  • Instead, Hawk's antidisestablishmentarianism, like a cancerous wart on the end of the nose, is perched at the fuzzy border separating ontology from oncology, malignity from malignancy.2002, Angela Hague; David Lavery (credited as editors, but actually authors of the compiled fictional reviews), Teleparody…. From the entry antidisestablishmentarianism

Meaning of ontology

  1. noun The branch of metaphysics that addresses the nature or essential characteristics of being and of things that exist; the study of being qua being.
  2. noun In a subject view, or a world view, the set of conceptual or material things or classes of things that are recognised as existing, or are assumed to exist in context, and their interrelations; in a body of theory, the ontology comprises the domain of discourse, the things that are defined as existing, together with whatever emerges from their mutual implications.
  3. noun The theory of a particular philosopher or school of thought concerning the fundamental types of entity in the universe.

Full definition of ontology

Questions about ontology in a sentence

How do you use ontology in a sentence?
Ontology is used as a noun. For example: “If English were a causal ontology, you could not say or write 'I ate my house', because you cannot eat a house.”
What is a short sentence with ontology?
“Doesn't reflectionism itself imply that ontology is somehow prior?”
What does ontology mean?
Ontology means the branch of metaphysics that addresses the nature or essential characteristics of being and of things that exist; the study of being qua being.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ontology (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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