The English word 'ontology', together with its counterparts in many languages, has made a breathtaking career during the last decades especially in information science, but also in other disciplines. Since its definition s vary considerably within and especially across disciplines, and since this volume, although clearly focused on linguistic matters, is conceived as tying together several disciplines, it seems appropriate to provide a short survey of these uses in order to make the different contributions and their interconnections more accessible for those readers who are not familiar with all the fields that arc represented between the covers of this book (presumably the majority).