• n. 种类，分类；[数] 范畴

cata-, 向下，相对。-agora, 广场，公开说，公开演讲，见allegory, 寓言。原指在广场发表演讲，叙述。后古希腊哲学家亚里士多德用该词描述类别，种类，使之固定为现在的词义。

category

category: [15] The word category has a rather complicated semantic history. It comes ultimately from Greek katēgorein ‘accuse’, a compound formed from the prefix katá- ‘against’ and agorá ‘public assembly’ (source of English agoraphobia and related to gregarious) – hence ‘speak against publicly’. ‘Accuse’ gradually became weakened in meaning to ‘assert, name’, and the derived noun katēgoríā was applied by Aristotle to the enumeration of all classes of things that can be named – hence ‘category’. The word reached English via late Latin catēgoria or French catégorie.
=> agoraphobia, gregarious, panegyric

category (n.)

1580s, from Middle French catégorie, from Late Latin categoria, from Greek kategoria "accusation, prediction, category," verbal noun from kategorein "to speak against; to accuse, assert, predicate," from kata "down to" (or perhaps "against;" see cata-) + agoreuein "to harangue, to declaim (in the assembly)," from agora "public assembly" (see agora). Original sense of "accuse" weakened to "assert, name" by the time Aristotle applied kategoria to his 10 classes of things that can be named.

category should be used by no-one who is not prepared to state (1) that he does not mean class, & (2) that he knows the difference between the two .... [Fowler]

1. The judges could not decide which category it belonged in.

评委们无法判定它属于哪一类。

来自柯林斯例句

2. Designer wedding dresses make wedding fashion a separate category from mainstream fashion.

著名设计师设计的婚纱使得婚纱时尚有别于主流服装时尚。

来自柯林斯例句

3. Over the decade, women in this category went up by 120%.

过去10年，这类女性多了120％。

来自柯林斯例句

4. This book clearly falls into the category of fictionalised autobiography.

这本书很显然属于自传体小说。

来自柯林斯例句

5. Students over 25 fall into a different category .

25岁以上的学生属另一类。

来自《权威词典》