category
noun
Simple meaning
A collection of things sharing a common attribute.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
katuhgawreeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈkætəɡɔɹi
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
mathematics
A collection of things sharing a common attribute
mathematics
A collection of objects, together with a transitively closed collection of composable arrows between them, such that every object has an identity arrow, and such that arrow composition is associative.
A group, often named or numbered, to which items are assigned based on similarity or defined criteria.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner (estimated)
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- General English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A collection of things sharing a common attribute
Used this way, category is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a mathematical use: it is defined precisely and belongs to working with figures and calculations rather than to ordinary conversation.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Mathematics
- Geometry
- Academic writing
- Education/classroom
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Related to A collection of things sharing a common attribute.
In an unqualified manner.
Place into or assign to a category.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A category of words having the same grammatical properties.
A category of words having the same grammatical properties.
Animal or plant group having natural relations.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
A group of people or things arranged by class or category.
A group of people or things arranged by class or category.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: collection of things sharing a common attribute
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.