Word to describe "X Make Up Y" word relationships
June 18, 2018 11:25 AM   Subscribe

Is there a word or phrase that refers to what I can only describe as “organization level” word groups (AKA things that make up other things)? i.e. cells->tissues->organs is an ideal example, but another one would be atoms->molecules->compounds(?). I’m having trouble coming up with others that follow this structure, or when flipped is "is made of" (organs are made of tissues).

My end goal is to help me find more words/examples like this, but it’s proving very hard to search for. If there isn’t an overall description for these kinds of words/relationships, a place that lists word groups like this would be great! Or if you can think of other examples I suppose we could start the list here haha.


Thanks in advance y’all!
posted by theRussian to Writing & Language (24 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Meronomy / partonomy comes to mind.
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:31 AM on June 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


Compose and comprise are such a pair of relational words:
50 states compose the USA
The USA comprises 50 states

These days people tend to say ‘the USA is composed of 50 states’, but the forms above are correct and concise.
posted by SaltySalticid at 11:32 AM on June 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


Try "structural hierarchy" especially for sciencey examples.
posted by adiabatic at 11:37 AM on June 18, 2018


Response by poster: Oh don't mean to thread-sit, but I don't mean the verbs that link them, but the noun groups. i.e I'm looking for more examples like (cell/tissue/organ)
posted by theRussian at 11:39 AM on June 18, 2018


Taxonomy?
posted by greta simone at 11:57 AM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


Perhaps superordination and hypernym are useful jargon for searching?
posted by eirias at 12:03 PM on June 18, 2018


not to get too (ahem) meta, but computer science-y types formulate this as information retrieval ontologies - pertaining to the general structure of domains, categories, subcategories, etc. There's lots of examples if you look into "semantic web" structured representations of particular domains.
posted by rye bread at 12:08 PM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


Like employee/department/division? Taxonomy would be the word I would use.
posted by gideonfrog at 12:23 PM on June 18, 2018


A linguistic term you might find useful is meronym. If Xes are parts of Ys, then the word "X" is a meronym of the word "Y." So the word "atom" is a meronym of the word "molecule."

WordNet is a lexical resource that lists meronyms. Here are a bunch of meronyms of 'car'. Some, like 'engine,' have meronyms of their own. It's not a complete resource by any means (you can probably think of car engine parts that aren't on that list) but you might find it useful to poke around for examples.
posted by nebulawindphone at 12:30 PM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


(Might also be useful to know that the inverse of "meronym" is "holonym." "Engine" is a meronym of "car"; "car" is a holonym of "engine." "Cell" is a meronym of "tissue"; "tissue" is a holonym of "cell.")
posted by nebulawindphone at 12:34 PM on June 18, 2018




domain/kingdom/phylum/class/order/family/genus/species: taxonomic rank
posted by flabdablet at 12:38 PM on June 18, 2018


An IT pattern that generalises this: files in folders in folders in folders... form a hierarchical file system, so toss hierarchy into your mix of search terms too.
posted by flabdablet at 12:43 PM on June 18, 2018


A holon (Greek: ὅλον, holon neuter form of ὅλος, holos "whole") is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part.
posted by ottereroticist at 1:08 PM on June 18, 2018


I came to say taxonomy. Also:

note->chord->song->album
posted by unreasonable at 1:20 PM on June 18, 2018


word —> sentence—> paragraph
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:29 PM on June 18, 2018


city -> county -> state -> country?

It's not perfect, because counties often have some unincorporated land (that's not in a city), but I guess organs have some stuff that's not cells (e.g., blood, spinal fluid, etc) so maybe it's cool.

Planet -> solar system -> galaxy -> galaxy cluster?

Do the eight Linnaean taxa count? A genus is a bunch of species, a family is a bunch of genera, and cetera?
posted by aubilenon at 2:07 PM on June 18, 2018


Student, class, school.
posted by eisforcool at 3:03 PM on June 18, 2018


Page, book, library.
posted by eisforcool at 3:04 PM on June 18, 2018


Units of measurement: bytes. Centimeters. Litres. Etc. (and their scales). Also time (seconds, minutes etc).
posted by eisforcool at 3:12 PM on June 18, 2018


fibre - thread - fabric - garment
posted by pseudostrabismus at 5:04 PM on June 18, 2018


Levels of analysis?
posted by introcosm at 5:19 PM on June 18, 2018


Quark>proton>atom>element
posted by ananci at 6:43 PM on June 18, 2018


Response by poster: Thanks y'all -- these have given me somethings to look into further! I think meronym doesn't quite fit mostly because there are other parts involved.. like a car isn't made solely of engines. This is for a work thing so I'll be noodling on it some more this week :)

Thanks for the new linguistics and philosophy terms!
posted by theRussian at 12:50 PM on June 19, 2018


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