In philosophy, a core ontology is a basic and minimal ontology consisting only of the minimal concepts required to understand the other concepts.
Each natural language tends to rely on its own conceptual metaphor structure, and so tends to have its own core ontology (according to W. V. Quine).
Most applicable to teaching, e.g. the Longmans defining dictionary of the simplest meanings of 2,000 English words is used to define the 4,000 most basic English idioms—this is a core glossary of the English language, which permits access to the core ontology (the idioms).
Core ontologies is a concept that is used in information science as well.
For example, CIDOC-CRM and CORA[1] are considered as core ontologies.