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Is there a hypernym for the following terms?

  • Local business
  • Company
  • Organization or institution

Edit

I am building a website where one can create a profile that will either be a Local Business, a company, an organization or an institution. At the moment I am using the general term Profiles but it does not sound very professional. I would like to stand away from the term Profiles if possible. I was also thinking about the term Entity but it's not very nice either.. Facebook is using the general term Pages (see here) but for them, a page can also be a brand, a cause, a community, etc...which is a bit different.

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  • Is there a particular context you're looking to use this in?
    – user10893
    Commented Apr 7, 2013 at 2:11
  • 1
    Yes, we absolutely need context. Otherwise anything from entity to noun is a valid suggestion.
    – RegDwigнt
    Commented Apr 7, 2013 at 2:13
  • 1
    I think you need to decide whether you want to talk about the pages on which the profiles are contained, the profiles themselves or the subjects of the profiles. What is important to you here?
    – Jim
    Commented Apr 7, 2013 at 3:54
  • 2
    Then there you go, call them profiles because while the profiles may be about companies, institutions, etc, that's not what you are talking about.
    – Jim
    Commented Apr 7, 2013 at 5:45
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    An organization is anything that is organized. I'm not sure a hypernym would be very helpful; can't you use the term as it is? Commented Apr 7, 2013 at 11:19

6 Answers 6

2

The term which strikes me as the most apt for this is enterprise.

1

The term business venture is very general, but may be associated with risk or gambling. If it's clear from the context that no such undertaking is implied, then it may be applicable in your case.

Another useful word may be operation, but it is less formal in my opinion.

1

How about "corporate entity" or "business entity"?

EDIT: Based on TimLymington's comment (good one! I had missed this type of customer all together) and on the current lingo adopted by the likes of Facebook, I suggest "Homes" as in "The entity's Home on the web". "Home" is also a standard term for a website's landing page.

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  • 1
    Government departments, churches or charities may need profiles, but would not be happy with these descriptions. Commented Apr 10, 2013 at 22:07
0

You could also use initiative.

-1

For the specific application you are talking about, I would suggest:

activity/organization

That could be a good choice in the context of a website that aims at identifying the four entities: local business, company, organization or institution. Both a local business and a company are economic activities, because a local business is a specific type of company . An organization is most certainly an organization, and an institution may refer to an organization. So, website users will know that what they are searching for could be under activity/organization.

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  • To make this a better answer, can you please expand on why this is a good choice?
    – Ronan
    Commented Aug 29, 2014 at 10:40
  • 1
    Done. The pair activity/organization isn't a hypernym, but could be useful in this context. I specified it at the beginning of the answer, so to clarify what I'm trying to say there.
    – lev
    Commented Aug 29, 2014 at 13:22
-2

You can use the word entrepreneur.

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  • 1
    "Entrepreneur" always refers to a person; the question asks about a word which can be applied to companies and other types of organisation. Commented Apr 12, 2013 at 15:33

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