categorist

English

Etymology

From category +‎ -ist.

Noun

categorist (plural categorists)

1. Someone who categorizes.

   Synonym: categorizer

   • 1850, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Swedenborg; or, the Mystic”, in Representative Men:

     Strictly speaking, Swedenborg’s revelation is a confounding of planes,—a capital offence in so learned a categorist.

   • 1971, Walter Kerr, God on the Gymnasium Floor, and Other Theatrical Adventures, page 150:

     A man—and for Pinter the male now tends to become the categorist — is baffled by the presence of a filthy old matchseller who stands at the bottom of the lane near his house daily.

   • 2008, Andrew D. Mitchell, Legal Principles in WTO Disputes:

     For categorists, general principles 'express the essential qualities of juridical truth itself, in short of Law'.

2. A mathematician who specializes in category theory.
   • 1988, Michael Main, Austin Melton, Michael Mislove, Mathematical Foundations of Programming Language Semantics, page 498:

     The concept of path of arrows is what the categorist uses instead of the concept of word or string of symbols.

   • 1995, Michael Barr, Charles Wells, Category Theory for Computing Science - Volume 1, page 48:

     This mapping is regarded by the categorist as an inclusion, even though in fact it may change what the integer really is.

   • 2013, P.R. Halmos, I Want to be a Mathematician: An Automathography:

     Four among them were Walter Feit (of Feit-Thopson simple group fame), John Isbell (who, God forgive him, became a categorist), Karel de Leeuw (an excellent harmonic analyst, brutally murdered in his middle age by a psychotic student) , and Sterling Berberian.

References

• “categorist”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.