Autohyponymy

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The quality or state of being an autohyponym; the semantic relation between a sense of a term (word) with another sense of the same term. uncountable

    "First of all he speaks of linear polysemy, i.e. relations of specialization (or generalization) between polysemic senses which include autohyponymy (dog: animal species, male of this species) and autosuperordination (i.e. autohyperonymy; man: human male, human race) […]"

Example

More examples

"First of all he speaks of linear polysemy, i.e. relations of specialization (or generalization) between polysemic senses which include autohyponymy (dog: animal species, male of this species) and autosuperordination (i.e. autohyperonymy; man: human male, human race) […]"

Etymology

By surface analysis, auto- + hyponymy, or, by surface analysis, autohyponym + -y.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.