category
pronunciation
How to pronounce category in British English:
UK [ˈkætəɡəri]
How to pronounce category in American English:
US [ˈkætəɡɔːri]
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- Noun:
- a collection of things sharing a common attribute
- a general concept that marks divisions or coordinations in a conceptual scheme
Word Origin
- category
- category: [15] The word category has a rather complicated semantic history. It comes ultimately from Greek katēgorein ‘accuse’, a compound formed from the prefix katá- ‘against’ and agorá ‘public assembly’ (source of English agoraphobia and related to gregarious) – hence ‘speak against publicly’. ‘Accuse’ gradually became weakened in meaning to ‘assert, name’, and the derived noun katēgoríā was applied by Aristotle to the enumeration of all classes of things that can be named – hence ‘category’. The word reached English via late Latin catēgoria or French catégorie.=> agoraphobia, gregarious, panegyric
- category (n.)
- 1580s, from Middle French catégorie, from Late Latin categoria, from Greek kategoria "accusation, prediction, category," verbal noun from kategorein "to speak against; to accuse, assert, predicate," from kata "down to" (or perhaps "against;" see cata-) + agoreuein "to harangue, to declaim (in the assembly)," from agora "public assembly" (see agora). Original sense of "accuse" weakened to "assert, name" by the time Aristotle applied kategoria to his 10 classes of things that can be named. category should be used by no-one who is not prepared to state (1) that he does not mean class, & (2) that he knows the difference between the two .... [Fowler]
Example
- 1. Electronic paper is surely in the second category .
- 2. High-speed rail was also in that category .
- 3. A second candidate for the extractive-elite category is the public sector .
- 4. Or does each category have its own special circumstances ?
- 5. Recent proposals from the us treasury fall partly into this category .