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Node vs Category - What's the difference?

node | category |

As nouns the difference between node and category

is that node is a knot, knob, protuberance or swelling while category is a group, often named or numbered, to which items are assigned based on similarity or defined criteria.

As an abbreviation NODE

is New Oxford Dictionary of English

node

English

(wikipedia node)

Noun

(en noun)
  • A knot, knob, protuberance or swelling.
  • (astronomy) The point where the orbit of a planet, as viewed from the Sun, intersects the ecliptic. The ascending and descending nodes refer respectively to the points where the planet moves from S to N and N to S. The respective symbols are .
  • (botany) A stem node.
  • (computer networking) A computer or other device attached to a network.
  • (engineering) The point at which the lines of a funicular machine meet from different angular directions; -- called also knot.
  • (geometry) The point at which a curve crosses itself, being a double point of the curve. See Crunode, and Acnode.
  • (graph theory) A vertex or a leaf in a graph of a network, or other element in a data structure.
  • (medicine) A hard concretion or incrustation which forms upon bones attacked with rheumatism, gout, or syphilis; sometimes also, a swelling in the neighborhood of a joint.
  • (physics) A point along a standing wave where the wave has minimal amplitude.
  • (rare) The knot, intrigue, or plot of a piece.
  • (technical) A hole in the gnomon of a sundial, through which passes the ray of light which marks the hour of the day, the parallels of the Sun's declination, his place in the ecliptic, etc.
  • The word of interest in a KWIC, surrounded by left and right cotexts.
  • Derived terms

    * acnode * crunode * hardware node * leaf-node * tacnode

    Synonyms

    * (computer networking) host * (graph theory) vertex

    See also

    * neurode

    Anagrams

    * ----

    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