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Analogy vs Category - What's the difference?

analogy | category |

As nouns the difference between analogy and category

is that analogy is a relationship of resemblance or equivalence between two situations, people, or objects, especially when used as a basis for explanation or extrapolation while category is a group, often named or numbered, to which items are assigned based on similarity or defined criteria.

analogy

Noun

(analogies)
  • A relationship of resemblance or equivalence between two situations, people, or objects, especially when used as a basis for explanation or extrapolation.
  • * 1841 , , Essays: First Series , ch. 6:
  • Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not without their analogy in the ebb and flow of love.
  • * 1869 , , The Uncommercial Traveller , ch. 18:
  • Is there any analogy , in certain constitutions, between keeping an umbrella up, and keeping the spirits up?
  • * 1901 , , The Valley of Decision , ch. 12:
  • The old analogy likening the human mind to an imperfect mirror, which modifies the images it reflects, occurred more than once to Odo.
  • * 1983 , " How to Write Programs," Time , 3 Jan.:
  • Perhaps the easiest way to think of it is in terms of a simple analogy : hardware is to software as a television set is to the shows that appear on it.
  • * 2002 , , Gone for Good , ISBN 9780440236733, p. 75:
  • A kid living on the street is a bit like — and please pardon the analogy here — a weed.

    Derived terms

    * disanalogy * false analogy

    See also

    * metaphor * simile * example * homology * parable * parallelism English words prefixed with ana-

    category

    Noun

    (categories)
  • A group, often named or numbered, to which items are assigned based on similarity or defined criteria.
  • *
  • The traditional way of describing the similarities and differences between constituents is to say that they belong to categories'' of various types. Thus, words like ''boy'', ''girl'', ''man'', ''woman'', etc. are traditionally said to belong to the category''' of Nouns, whereas words like ''a'', ''the'', ''this'', and ''that'' are traditionally said to belong to the ' category of Determiners.
    This steep and dangerous climb belongs to the most difficult category .
    I wouldn't put this book in the same category as the author's first novel.
  • (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.
  • One well-known category has sets as objects and functions as arrows.
    Just as a monoid consists of an underlying set with a binary operation "on top of it" which is closed, associative and with an identity, a category consists of an underlying digraph with an arrow composition operation "on top of it" which is transitively closed, associative, and with an identity at each object. In fact, a category's composition operation, when restricted to a single one of its objects, turns that object's set of arrows (which would all be loops) into a monoid.

    Synonyms

    * (group to which items are assigned) class, family, genus, group, kingdom, order, phylum, race, tribe, type * See also

    Derived terms

    * category mistake * category theory * conceptual category * perceptual category * subcategory * supercategory