ontology

Etymology

It is borrowed from New Latin ontologia,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} formed from onto-, from Ancient Greek ὄν (ón, “being, that which exists”), the neuter present participle of the verb meaning "to be",^[2][7][8] and -logia, from -λογία (-logía), the source of -logy.^[9][2] The OED finds the Latin word in 1613, written in Greek characters, in Goclenius's “Lexicon Philosophicum”, and notes that Clauberg proposed it in 1646 as another name for metaphysica, after Aristotle's definition of that science as the study of being.^[2] Etymonline dates the Latin word to about 1600.^[3] ontologie is recorded from 1692 and Ontologie from 1764 or earlier.^[2] Barnhart, who dated the English word only to 1721, took it from the French word.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The science or study of being, the branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature of existence: 1663, in Gideon Harvey's Archelogia Philosophica Nova.^[2][3][4] Barnhart's first record is in Bailey's dictionary of 1721,^[10] and the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English date the word to the early 18th century.^[5][6]

Semantic evolution

Johnson (1755) defined it as the science of the affections of being in general, that is, metaphysics, quoting Watts's Logick.^[11] Barnhart remarks that by its form the word ought to mean the study of a being or of beings, and that a study of being as such would more strictly have been called ousiology, from Greek ousíā, being.^[10] From 1855 the word could also name a particular theory of the nature of being, and later anything like it.^[2] In logic it has named, since 1938, the system of Stanislaw Leśniewski, comparable to predicate logic,^[2] and more generally the set of entities that a theory takes to exist.^[12][4] The American Heritage Dictionary records a computing sense, a system for naming, classifying and defining objects.^[13]

Timeline

• 1663 – the science or study of being.^[2][14]
• 1855 – a theory or conception of the nature of being.^[2]
• 1938 – in logic, Leśniewski's system.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The branch of metaphysics that studies the nature of being and existence.^{[12][4][13][2]}
2. A particular theory or system concerning the nature of being.^[2][4]
3. (logic) The set of entities that a theory assumes to exist, or a theory of which kinds of entity a language system admits.^[12][4]
4. (computing) A system for naming, classifying and defining objects and the relations between them.^[13]

Word family

• ontological
• ontologically
• ontologist
• ontologize

Related words

• ontic
• onto-
• -logy
• ontogeny
• metaphysics

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
9. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
13. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
14. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)