A meronomy or partonomy is a hierarchical taxonomy that deals with part–whole relationships. For example, a car has parts that include engine, body and wheels; and the body has parts that include doors and windows.
These conceptual structures are used in linguistics and computer science, with applications in biology. The part–whole relationship is sometimes referred to as HAS-A, and corresponds to object composition in object-oriented programming.[1]
The study of meronomy is known as mereology, and in linguistics a meronym is the name given to a constituent part of, a substance of, or a member of something. "X" is a meronym of "Y" if an X is a part of a Y.[2] The unit of organisation that corresponds to the taxonomical taxon is the meron.
In formal terms, in the context of knowledge representation and ontologies, a meronomy is a partial order of concept types by the part–whole relation.[3]
In the classic study of parts and wholes, mereology, the three defining properties of a partial order serve as axioms.[4] They are, respectively, that the part-of relation is
Meronomies may be represented in semantic web languages such as OWL and SKOS. In natural languages they are represented by meronyms and holonyms.