HYPONYM AND HYPERNYM

In linguistics, a specific term used to designate a member of a class. For instance, oak is a hyponym of tree, and dog is a hyponym of animal. The opposite of a hyponym is a hypernym.

Examples and Observations:

• "In general, there are a number of hyponyms for each subordinate. For example, boar and piglet are also hyponyms of the subordinate pig, since the meaning of each of the three words sow, boar, and piglet 'contains' the meaning of the word pig. (Note that in defining a word like sow, boar, or piglet, the subordinate word pig is often used as part of the definition: 'A sow is an adult female pig.') Thus, it is not surprising that hyponymy is sometimes referred to as inclusion. The subordinate is the included word and the hyponym is the including one."
  (Frank Parker and Kathryn Riley, Linguistics for Non-Linguists. Allyn and Bacon, 1994)
• "Hyponymy is a less familiar term to most people than either synonymy or antonymy, but it refers to a much more important sense relation. It describes what happens when we say 'An X is a kind of Y'--A daffodil is a kind of flower, or simply, A daffodil is a flower."
  (David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2003)
• "House is a hyponym of the subordinate building, but building is in turn, a hyponym of the subordinate structure, and, in its turn, structure is a hyponym of the subordinate thing. A subordinate at a given level can itself be a hyponym at a higher level."
  (Patrick Griffiths, An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics. Edinburgh University Press, 2006)

A linguistic term for a word whose meaning includes the meanings of other words; the opposite of hyponym.

Examples and Observations:

• "The foot of footstep narrows down the type of step being expressed to the step made by a foot. A footstep is a kind of step; or, in more technical terms, footstep is a hyponym, or subtype, of step, and step is a hypernym, or supertype, of footstep. . . . Doorstep is also a hyponym of step, and step is a hypernym of doorstep."
  (Keith M. Denning, Brett Kessler, and William Ronald Leben, English Vocabulary Elements. Oxford Univ. Press, 2007)
• "The most illuminating way of defining a lexeme is to provide a hypernym along with various distinguishing features--an approach to definition whose history can be traced back to Aristotle. For example, a majorette is 'a girl' (the hypernym) 'who twirls a baton and accompanies a marching band.' It is usually possible to trace a hierarchical path through a dictionary, following the hypernyms as they become increasingly abstract, until we arrive at such general notions (essence, being, existence) that clear sense-relations between the lexemes no longer exist."
  (David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003)
• "A hypernym is a word with a general meaning that has basically the same meaning of a more specific word. For example, dog is a hypernym, while collie and chihuahua are more specific subordinate terms. The hypernym tends to be a basic-level category that is used by speakers with high frequency; speakers usually refer to collies and chihuahuas as dogs, rather than using the subordinate terms, which are consequently of relatively low frequency."
  (Laurie Beth Feldman, Morphological Aspects of Language Processing. Lawrence Erlbaum, 1995)

http://grammar.about.com/od/fh/g/hyponymterm.htm