Source : Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

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.