category

English Online Dictionary. What means category‎? What does category mean?

English

Etymology

Late Middle English, borrowed from French catégorie, from Middle French categorie, from Late Latin catēgoria (“class of predicables”), from Ancient Greek κατηγορία (katēgoría, “head of predicables”). Doublet of categoria.

Pronunciation

• (General American, Canada) IPA^(key): /ˈkætəˌɡɔɹi/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈkætɪɡ(ə)ɹi/
• (New Zealand) IPA^(key): /ˈkɛtɘɡ(ɘ)ɹi/, /ˈkɛtɘˌɡoːɹi/
• Hyphenation: cat‧e‧go‧ry, cat‧e‧gory

Noun

category (plural categories)

1. A group, often named or numbered, to which items are assigned based on similarity or defined criteria.

   Synonyms: class, family, genus, kingdom, order, pigeonhole, phylum, race, tribe, type; see also Thesaurus:class
2. (mathematics) A collection of objects, together with a transitively closed collection of composable arrows between them, such that every object has an identity arrow, and such that arrow composition is associative.

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Related terms

• categorial
• categorical
• categorise, categorize

Translations

Further reading

• “category”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “category”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.