category Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun a collection of things sharing a common attribute
    class; family.
    • there are two classes of detergents
  2. noun a general concept that marks divisions or coordinations in a conceptual scheme

WordNet

Cat"e*go*ry noun
Etymology
L. categoria, Gr. , fr. to accuse, affirm, predicate; down, against + to harrangue, assert, fr. assembly.
Wordforms
plural
plural Categories
Definitions
  1. (Logic.) One of the highest classes to which the objects of knowledge or thought can be reduced, and by which they can be arranged in a system; an ultimate or undecomposable conception; a predicament.
    The categories or predicaments -- the former a Greek word, the latter its literal translation in the Latin language -- were intended by Aristotle and his followers as an enumeration of all things capable of being named; an enumeration by the summa genera i.e., the most extensive classes into which things could be distributed. J. S. Mill.
  2. Class; also, state, condition, or predicament; as, we are both in the same category.
    There is in modern literature a whole class of writers standing within the same category. De Quincey.

Webster 1913