Semantic relationships

The most common types of semantic relationships among terms are:

the equivalence relationship,
the hierarchical relationship and
the associative relationship

and there are three kinds of hierarchical relationships:

Generic relationship
Instance relationship
Whole-part relationship

The `Whole-part' relationship is between terms where one concept is inherently included in another. Four major types of this relationship occur:
systems and organs of the body,
geographic locations,
disciplines or fields of discourse, and
hierarchical organizational, corporate, social or political structures.

(Source: Consumer Egg Thesaurus - http://www.slais.ubc.ca/COURSES/libr512/01-02-wt2/thesauri/Eggs/structure.htm)