Word.ws English Dictionary

category-mistake

category-mistake is the alternative form of category mistake.

Meaning of category mistake

Noun

category mistake (plural category mistakes)

  1. A semantic or ontological error by which a property (or category) is ascribed to a thing that could not possibly have that property.
    • It is one big mistake and a mistake of a special kind. It is, namely, a category-mistake. It represents the facts of mental life as if they belonged to one logical type or category (or range of types or categories), when they actually belong to another. The dogma is therefore a philosopher's myth.1949, Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind, Hutchinson, page 16
    Synonyms:
    category error

Forms of category-mistake

pluralcategory-mistakes

Questions about category-mistake

What is category-mistake the alternative form of?
Category-mistake is the alternative form of category mistake.

Words near category-mistake in the dictionary

  1. category mistake
  2. category mistakes
  3. category reference
  4. category references
  5. category theory
  6. category-mistake
  7. category-mistakes
  8. categoryless
  9. categorylessness
  10. Catel-Manzke syndrome
  11. catelectrode

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: category-mistake (page history and authors); category mistake (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “category-mistake.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/category-mistake. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.