Category \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.

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)