Abbreviations in OpenCyc Documentation

E-Mail Comments to: doc@cyc.com
Last Update: 03/15/2002 20:13:40
Copyright© 1996-2002 Cycorp. All rights reserved.
The following is a list of abbreviations found in various OpenCyc materials.

Abbrev. Definition
AIS AbstractInformationStructure
API Application Programmers' Interface
Arg Logical 'argument' position of some relation in the CYC KB.
BLO #$BiologicalLivingObject
CNF Conjunctive Normal Form
CW Conceptual Work
CycL The Cyc® description language; extended predicate logic; formerly called CL (Constraint Language), then EL (Epistemological Language); see #$CycL (includes HL)
DARPA Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
Defn Definition
DNF Disjunctive Normal Form
EL Epistemological Level (user-level representations)
FI Functional Interface
Fn Function
FOPC First-Order Predicate Calculus
fp Forward Propagate
GAF Ground Atomic Formula
genl Generalization (i.e. a more general term); #$genls is star-closure
GT General Transitivity
HL Heuristic Level (an internal machine represention)
HPKB The DARPA High-Performance Knowledge Bases project
IBO #$InformationBearingObject
IBQS #$IntervalBasedQuantitySlot
IBT #$InformationBearingThing
IDE Integrated Development Environment
IKB Integrated Knowledge Base -- the version of the Cyc® Knowledge Base released for the High-Performance Knowledge Base project
KB #$KnowledgeBase, specifically, the CYC® Knowledge Base
KE Knowledge Entry (into the CYC® KB)
KFD Knowledge Formation through Dialog
LHS Left-Hand Side (of a rule); the antecedent
MELD Moderately Expressive Logical Description language; a superset of CycL
Mt #$Microtheory
MWW Multi-Word-Word
NART Non-Atomic Reified Term
NAT Non-Atomic Term; a function together with its argument(s)
NAUT Non-Atomic Un-reified Term; a functional term that is semantically valid but CYC® has currently not thought about (like John Smith's great-great grandmother)
NL Natural Language
NLP Natural Language Processing; also Natural Language Parsing
NLU Natural Language Understanding
OE Ontological Engineer or Engineering
PIT #$PropositionalInformationThing
pred #$Predicate
PSC #$ProblemSolvingCntxt
Reln Relation
RHS Right-Hand Side (of a rule); the consequent
RKF Rapid Knowledge Formation -- the DARPA follow-on research project to HPKB
SDBI Semantic Database Integration
SKSI Semantic Knowledge Source Integration
SME Subject Matter Expert
spec Specialization (i.e. a more specialized term); (inverse of #$genls); specs is star-closure
STIB Short Time Interval Before [see #$STIB]
STIF Short Time Interval Following [see #$STIF]
SubL A dialect of Lisp designed to implement the Cyc® application
TMS Truth-Maintenance System
WALES Web-Assisted Lexical Entry System
WFF Well-formed formula; pronounced 'woof.' Used as an adjective to denote correctness (i.e. 'This CycL sentence is not wff.')