Cat"e*go*ry (?), n.; pl. Categories (#) [L. categoria, Gr. , fr. to accuse, affirm, predicate; down, against + to harrangue, assert, fr. assembly.]
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.