category
cat·e·go·ry/ˈkæt.ɪˌɡoɹ.i/noun
category is spelled C-A-T-E-G-O-R-Y, 4 syllables: cat·e·go·ry. The wrong spelling people search most is catagory: about 510 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 15 of all searches for the word. Category is a noun meaning “A group, often named or numbered, to which items are assigned based on similarity or defined criteria”. The plural of category is categories.
How many letters and syllables are in category?
| Letters | 8: C-A-T-E-G-O-R-Y |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 4: cat·e·go·ry |
| In writing | 37 times per million words; the 2,618th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 3; the most searched, catagory, about 510 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell category?
Category is spelled C-A-T-E-G-O-R-Y. 3 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 11 of the searches for category in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is category?
Category appears 37 times per million words in written English, the 2,618th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce category?
- UK /ˈkæt.ɪ.ɡ(ə.)ɹi/
- US /ˈkæt.ɪˌɡoɹ.i/
- US [ˈkʰæɾ.ɪˌɡoɹ.i]
Category has 4 syllables, split cat·e·go·ry in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-category.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of category
- categories plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does category mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A group, often named or numbered, to which items are assigned based on similarity or defined criteria.
This steep and dangerous climb belongs to the most difficult category.
- 2
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.
One well-known category has sets as objects and functions as arrows.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you abbreviate category?
Wiktionary records one abbreviation of category: cat.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Category in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense group:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.