— meer-ee-OL-uh-jee. The formal study of parts and wholes: a handle belongs to a door, and the door to a building; ordinary parthood lets us carry that relationship through. Functional uses of “part of” can behave differently. An original sentence for the Met: “The exhibition’s mereology changes when a discarded drawing becomes part of a new collage.” Pronunciation · Stanford’s fuller account.
*Reporting cutoff: October 7, 2:12 a.m. London. Event times are labelled locally. *