category
Americannoun
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categories
plural
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any general or comprehensive division; a class.
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a classificatory division in any field of knowledge, as a phylum or any of its subdivisions in biology.
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Metaphysics.
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(in Aristotelian philosophy) any of the fundamental modes of existence, such as substance, quality, and quantity, as determined by analysis of the different possible kinds of predication.
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(in Kantian philosophy) any of the fundamental principles of the understanding, as the principle of causation.
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any classification of terms that is ultimate and not susceptible to further analysis.
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Also called Guggenheim. (used with a singular verb) categories. a game in which a key word and a list of categories, as dogs, automobiles, or rivers, are selected, and in which each player writes down a word in each category that begins with each of the letters of the key word, the player writing down the most words within a time limit being declared the winner.
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Mathematics. a type of mathematical object, as a set, group, or metric space, together with a set of mappings from such an object to other objects of the same type.
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Grammar. part of speech.
noun
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a class or group of things, people, etc, possessing some quality or qualities in common; a division in a system of classification
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metaphysics any one of the most basic classes into which objects and concepts can be analysed
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(in the philosophy of Aristotle) any one of ten most fundamental modes of being, such as quantity, quality, and substance
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(in the philosophy of Kant) one of twelve concepts required by human beings to interpret the empirical world
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any set of objects, concepts, or expressions distinguished from others within some logical or linguistic theory by the intelligibility of a specific set of statements concerning them See also category mistake
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Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of category
First recorded in 1580–90; from Late Latin catēgoria, from Greek katēgoría “accusation” (in logic, “predication”), from katēgoreîn “to accuse, affirm,” from kata- cata- + agoreúein “to speak before the agora 1 ” + -ia -y 3
Explanation
A category is a group of things that share some commonality. Think of the game show "Jeopardy!," and how each column is a different category of questions — like "Literary Characters" or "Potent Potables." The noun category has the sense of ordering or sorting. In Biology, the science of taxonomy is all about categorizing all living organisms. It might be an easier task to categorize books in a library according to genre (e.g., fiction, non-fiction, mysteries, etc.) or to categorize the shoes in your closet according to season.
Vocabulary lists containing category
Jim Burke's Academic Vocabulary List
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Break It Down: Cata
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Academic Vocabulary: Core Tier 2 Words, List 3
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
With his new smart home push, Apple’s new chief executive has a chance to reinvigorate a stalled category and draw consumers deeper into the Apple ecosystem.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 14, 2026
In interviews and via his vanity cards he would, occasionally, rail against television critics, network censors, reality TV and the Television Academy, which consistently overlooked his series in the best comedy category.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 13, 2026
Daniel O’Regan, managing director for equity trading at Mizuho, pointed out in a note that the optical category was a “massive outperformer” on Friday, following bullish comments on component demand from the CEO of Lumentum.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 12, 2026
Isaias, the first hurricane in the Atlantic this hurricane season has been continuing to strengthen and is now a category three 'major' hurricane.
From BBC ● Oct. 9, 2026
“All right, you Maniac Magees, here is your picture puzzle. The category is Famous Quotes. You have sixty seconds to solve this rebus.”
From "Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library" by Chris Grabenstein
Mr. Byrne’s categories are fairly arbitrary, as he admits.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026
Overall, 26 clubs were graded on this system,, external split into three categories, A, B and C.
From BBC ● Oct. 8, 2026
The second store bought about a dozen similar records for $2 each, again shunning the other categories.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 8, 2026
The owl, bumblebee and hedgehog topped a public vote in their specific categories, and the puffin was included to celebrate marine life, the coastline and bring variety to the notes, the Bank said.
From BBC ● Oct. 7, 2026
Gordon’s Skill Learning Sequence is based on two main categories of learning: Discrimination and Inference.
From "Music and the Child" by Natalie Sarrazin
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
