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Category vs Entity - What's the difference?

category | entity |

As nouns the difference between category and entity

is that category is a group, often named or numbered, to which items are assigned based on similarity or defined criteria while entity is that which has a distinct existence as an individual unit often used for organisations which have no physical form.

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

    entity

    English

    (wikipedia entity)

    Noun

    (entities)
  • That which has a distinct existence as an individual unit. Often used for organisations which have no physical form.
  • *
  • It is also pertinent to note that the current obvious decline in work on holarctic hepatics most surely reflects a current obsession with cataloging and with nomenclature of the organisms—as divorced from their study as living entities .
  • An existent something that has the properties of being real, and having a real existence.
  • (computing) Anything about which information or data can be stored in a database; in particular, an organised array or set of individual elements or parts.
  • The state or quality of being or existence.
  • The group successfully maintains its tribal entity.
  • * Quotation: The policy of the government of the United States is to seek . . . to preserve Chinese territorial and administrative entity --
  • Synonyms

    * See also

    Derived terms

    * entitative * entity-relationship model * geopolitical entity * legal entity * nonentity