Help identifying the word(s?) that describe or define this description: [duplicate]

Solution 1:

In the context of logic and maths, we have superset and subset, but when it comes to language, the more usual terms are...

Hyponymy and hypernymy (Wikipedia)
a hyponym is in a "type-of" relationship with its hypernym.
For example, pigeon, crow, eagle and seagull are all hyponyms of bird (their hypernym); which, in turn, is a hyponym of animal.

Other names for hypernym include umbrella term and blanket term.


In OP's example,...
apple is a hyponym (type of) fruit
fruit is a hypernym of apple, pear, banana, etc.

Solution 2:

"Coreference" is the reference in one expression to the same referent in another expression.(ref., lexico)

ref.: On Paraphrase and Coreference - MIT Press Journals

  • [The two expressions in bold are coreferential, but they are also a paraphrase of one another.] Tony went to see the ophthalmologist and got his eyes checked. The eye doctor told him …

  • Paraphrasing and coreference are usually defined as sameness relations: Two expressions that have the same meaning are paraphrastic, and two expressions that refer to the same entity in a discourse are coreferent. The concept of sameness is usually taken for granted and left unexplained, but establishing sameness is not straightforward. A strict interpretation of the concept makes sameness relations only possible in logic and mathematics, whereas a sloppy interpretation makes the definition too vague.

You can say that "fruit" and "apple" are not coreferencial and therefore, semantically, swapping subject and complement is not possible.

Solution 3:

This is, apart from its English aspects, a question of Set Theory. There are two sets: apples and fruits.

Apples are entirely contained in fruits, and fruits contain more than apples. In set theory this is expressed by saying that apples are a subset of fruits, fruits are a superset of apples. I have heard this summarised by: the description of apple as fruit is complete; but the description of fruit as apple is incomplete.