Ontolog

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A theoretical framework that examines the nature of being and existence in philosophy
2. A branch of metaphysics concerned with the categorization of entities and their relationships
3. A study focused on understanding what it means for something to exist and the various categories of existence

Etymology: Ontology comes from the Greek "on" (genitive "ontos"), the present participle of "einai," "to be," joined to "-logia," the study of something. Its first attested use is not from ancient philosophy at all but from 17th-century Europe: the German philosopher Rudolph Goclenius used the Latin form "ontologia" in a 1613 work, and the term was taken up by Christian Wolff in the early 1700s, who helped spread it across Europe. Aristotle had discussed the subject centuries earlier under the name "first philosophy," and the Greek "on" had been used for beings and existing things since at least Parmenides. The coinage was a later label for an inquiry that already existed, namely what there is and what kinds of things can be said to exist. In English the word appeared in the 19th century, and its use grew in the 20th century, when philosophers and computer scientists both adopted it, the latter for a structured account of the concepts in a particular domain.