different between whole vs mereology

English

Alternative forms

• hole (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English hole (“healthy, unhurt, whole”), from Old English h?l (“healthy, safe”), from Proto-Germanic *hailaz (“whole, safe, sound”) (compare West Frisian hiel, Low German heel/heil, Dutch heel, German heil, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål hel, Norwegian Nynorsk heil), from Proto-Indo-European *kóylos (“healthy, whole”). Compare Welsh coel (“omen”), Breton kel (“omen, mention”), Old Prussian kails (“healthy”), Old Church Slavonic ???? (c?l?, “healthy, unhurt”). Related to hale, health, hail, hallow, heal, and holy.

The spelling with wh-, introduced in the 15th century, was for disambiguation with hole, and was absent in Scots.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /h??l/, [h???], [h???]
• (US) IPA^(key): /ho?l/, [ho??]
• Homophone: hole
• Rhymes: -??l

Adjective

whole (comparative wholer or more whole, superlative wholest or most whole)

1. Entire, undivided.

   Synonyms: total; see also Thesaurus:entire

   • 1661, John Fell, The Life of the most learned, reverend and pious Dr. H. Hammond

     During the whole time of his abode in the university he generally spent thirteen hours of the day in study; by which assiduity besides an exact dispatch of the whole course of philosophy, he read over in a manner all classic authors that are extant […]
   1. Used as an intensifier.

      I brought a whole lot of balloons for the party.   She ate a whole bunch of french fries.

      • 2016, Rae Carson, Like a River Glorious, HarperCollins (?ISBN):

        There, a huge blue heron stands sentry like a statue, eye on the surface, waiting for his next meal to wriggle by. A lone grassy hill overlooks it all, well above the flood line, big enough to pitch a whole mess of tents [on].

      • 2011, Keith Maillard, Looking Good: Difficulty at the Beginning, Brindle and Glass (?ISBN):

        I'm thinking, thanks a whole fuck of a lot, Robert. You could have laid that on me weeks ago.

2. Sound, uninjured, healthy.

   Synonyms: hale, well; see also Thesaurus:healthy

   • 1939, Alfred Edward Housman, Additional Poems, X, lines 5-6

     Here, with one balm for many fevers found, / Whole of an ancient evil, I sleep sound.

3. (of food) From which none of its constituents has been removed.

4. (mining) As yet unworked.

Translations

Adverb

whole (comparative more whole, superlative most whole)

1. (colloquial) In entirety; entirely; wholly.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:completely

Translations

Noun

whole (plural wholes)

1. Something complete, without any parts missing.

   Synonyms: entireness, totality; see also Thesaurus:entirety

   Meronym: part

2. An entirety.

Translations

Derived terms

Further reading

• All and whole — Linguapress online English grammar

References

• whole at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• Howle, howel

English

Etymology

Coined by Stanis?aw Le?niewski in 1927, from Ancient Greek ????? (méros, “part”) +? -logy (“study, discussion, science”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?m???i??l?d?i/

Noun

mereology (countable and uncountable, plural mereologies)

1. (logic) The discipline which deals with the relationship of parts with their respective wholes.
   • 2001, Lech Polkowski, Spatial Reasoning via Rough Sets, Wojciech Ziarko, Yiyu Yao (editors), Rough Sets and Current Trends in Computing: 2nd International Conference RSCTC 2000, Revised Papers, Springer, LNAI 2005, page 479,

     In [13] a new paradigm for approximate reasoning, rough mereology, has been introduced. Rough mereology is based on the notion of a part to a degree and thus falls in the province of part–based mereologies.

   • 2007, Achille C. Varzi, Antony Galton (second reader), Chapter 15: Spatial Reasoning and Ontology: Parts, Wholes, and Locations, Marco Aiello, Ian Pratt-Hartmann, Johan van Benthem (editors), Handbook of Spatial Logics, Springer, page 947,

     Let us begin with mereology. This is often defined as the theory of the part-whole relation, but such a definition is misleading. It suggests that mereology has something to say about both parts and wholes, which is not true. As we shall see in Sec. 2, the notion of a whole goes beyond the conceptual resources of mereology and calls for topological concepts and principles of various sorts. By itself, mereology is best understood as the theory of the parthood relation, regardless of whether the second term of the relation may be said to qualify as a whole entity.

   • 2012, Guido Küng, Ontology and the Logistic Analysis of Language: An Enquiry into the Contemporary Views on Universals, Springer, Revised Edition, page 107,

     In 1926 Tarski drew Le?niewski's attention to the similarity existing between his mereology and Whitehead's theory of events. […] In the United States, mereology is known as the “calculus of individuals” — a designation that is etymologically somewhat paradoxical, since the objects of mereology are anything but indivisible individua.

Usage notes

Sometimes, slightly misleadingly, defined as the theory of parts and their wholes, although, strictly speaking, it does not deal with the parts or wholes per se, but only with the relationship between them.

Derived terms

• mereological

Translations

See also

• mereotopology
• meronymy

Anagrams

• eremology