meronymy.

A relationship between a word naming a part and a word naming the whole it belongs to.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• meronymy relation
• lexical meronymy
• meronymy between terms

On the page

The lexicon records meronymy between wheel and bicycle.

Usage notes

Primary category: academic / formal / analytical. Lexical Type: Word. Forms: Usually uncountable; no ordinary plural in this sense. Commonness: uncommon (editorial estimate; not a corpus frequency statistic). Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1; numbered fields keep each relevant meaning separate. Research distinction: Collins defines relationship between a meronym/part and the whole; not the class-inclusion relation of hyponymy. Writing functions: semantic analysis, language and rhetoric, conceptual distinction.