Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Category

Category , noun

[Latin categoria, Greek {not transcribed}, from {not transcribed} to accuse, affirm, predicate; {not transcribed} down, against + {not transcribed} to harrangue, assert, from {not transcribed} 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