1580s, in Aristotle's logic, "a highest notion," 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;") + agoreuein "to harangue, to declaim (in the assembly)," from agora "public assembly".
The verb's original sense of "accuse" had weakened to "assert, name" by the time Aristotle applied kategoria to his 10 classes of things that can be named. Exactly what he meant by it "has been disputed almost from his own day till the present" [OED]. Sense of "any very wide and distinctive class, any comprehensive class of persons or things" is from 1660s.
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]
古希腊著名哲学家亚里士多德在其哲学著作中提出了“范畴”（ category ）这个术语，“范畴”指的是“可用来描述、断言一个主体的最基本的概念”。亚里士多德总结了十种“范畴”（基本概念）：本质、量、质、关系、地点、时间、位置、状态、活动、遭受。
在其著作中，亚里士多德使用了希腊语 kategoria (κατηγορία) 来 表示“范畴”。 kategoria 原本是一个法律术语，表示“指控、断言”。它由 kata （= cata ，表示 down to 或 against ）+ agoreuein （当众宣称）构成。
category 就来源于希腊语 kategoria ，原本表示“范畴”。因为“范畴”代表的是一个基本概念，每一个范畴都代表一类具体事物，如“人”这个范畴就代表了一类生物，所以在非哲学场合， category 常用来表示“种类”。