CATEGORY
Dictionary entry overview: What does category mean?
• CATEGORY (noun)
The noun CATEGORY has 2 senses:
1. a collection of things sharing a common attribute
2. a general concept that marks divisions or coordinations in a conceptual scheme
Familiarity information: CATEGORY used as a noun is rare.
Dictionary entry details
• CATEGORY (noun)
Meaning:
A collection of things sharing a common attribute
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
Synonyms:
category; class; family
Context example:
there are two classes of detergents
Hypernyms ("category" is a kind of...):
accumulation; aggregation; assemblage; collection (several things grouped together or considered as a whole)
Meronyms (members of "category"):
superphylum ((biology) a taxonomic group ranking between a phylum and below a class or subclass)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "category"):
stamp (a type or class)
sex (either of the two categories (male or female) into which most organisms are divided)
declension (a class of nouns or pronouns or adjectives in Indo-European languages having the same (or very similar) inflectional forms)
conjugation (a class of verbs having the same inflectional forms)
denomination (a class of one kind of unit in a system of numbers or measures or weights or money)
woodwind family ((music) the family of woodwind instruments)
violin family ((music) the family of bowed stringed instruments)
brass family ((music) the family of brass instruments)
paradigm; substitution class (the class of all items that can be substituted into the same position (or slot) in a grammatical sentence (are in paradigmatic relation with one another))
grammatical category; syntactic category ((grammar) a category of words having the same grammatical properties)
Malacostraca; subclass Malacostraca (largest subclass of Crustacea including most of the well-known marine, freshwater, and terrestrial crustaceans: crabs; lobsters; shrimps; sow bugs; beach flies)
class Diplopoda; class Myriapoda; Diplopoda; Myriapoda (arthropods having the body composed of numerous double somites each with two pairs of legs: millipedes)
class Larvacea; Larvacea (small free-swimming tunicates; sometimes classified as an order)
histocompatibility complex (a family of fifty or more genes on the sixth human chromosome that code for proteins on the surfaces of cells and that play a role in the immune response)
Meaning:
A general concept that marks divisions or coordinations in a conceptual scheme
Classified under:
Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents
Hypernyms ("category" is a kind of...):
concept; conception; construct (an abstract or general idea inferred or derived from specific instances)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "category"):
form; kind; sort; variety (a category of things distinguished by some common characteristic or quality)
pigeonhole (a specific (often simplistic) category)
rubric (category name)
way (a general category of things; used in the expression 'in the way of')
