Thesaurus
A thesaurus is a structured vocabulary that shows basic relationships between concepts: hierarchical, associative, and equivalence. Users of a thesaurus not only will find terms that are broader and narrower than others, but also terms that are synonymous, antonymous, or otherwise related (associated) in a defined manner.
| Ontology | Taxonomy | Thesaurus | Vocabulary | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Describes | Concepts (content) and the relationships between them (structure), including axioms and restrictions | Hierarchical relationships among concepts, and specifies the term to be used to refer to each | Hierarchical and non-hierarchical relationships among concepts | General term for a collection of concepts (words) to do with a domain |
| Relationships | Typed hierarchical and associative | Basically hierarchical, but all modeled using same notation | Untyped hierarchical, associative, and equivalence | Unspecified (abstract concept) |
| Properties | RDFS defines relationship properties and restrictions | None | Can be described in scope notes if required | Unspecified (abstract concept) |
| Structured | Network | Tree | Cross-branch tree | Unspecified (abstract concept) |