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without exceptions or conditions; absolute; unqualified and unconditional:
a categorical denial.
Logic.

(of a proposition) analyzable into a subject and an attribute related by a copula, as in the proposition “All humans are mortal.”.
(of a syllogism) having categorical propositions as premises.

of, relating to, or in a category.
Historical Examples

It was on this formal, categoric, and solemn declaration that we voted Art.
The Religious Persecution in France 1900-1906 Jane Milliken Napier Brodhead

Not a categoric prohibition, but a caution not to sail too near the wind in this matter.
Instigations Ezra Pound

A second categoric message from her husband was the response.
Queen Hortense L. Mhlbach

The categoric Imperative in the individual is merely the result of his individual education.
A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution C. M. Williams

We have seen that at the beginning of any acquaintance the fellow-being is inevitably dealt with in the categoric way.
Introduction to the Science of Sociology Robert E. Park

The essential point is perhaps best brought out by Shaler in his distinction between sympathetic and categoric contacts.
Introduction to the Science of Sociology Robert E. Park

For no other race of the Mediterranean world was the moral law based on the “categoric imperative.”
The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire T. R. Glover

This diagnosis, so categoric underneath its familiar form and somewhat faulty grammar, sounded a serious cry of alarm.
Meissonier
Henri Barbusse

In love there is neither means nor end; if, however, categoric formulas must be used, one might speak of a reciprocal action.
The Evolution of Love Emil Lucka

adjective
unqualified; positive; unconditional: a categorical statement
relating to or included in a category
(logic) another word for categorial
adj.

1590s, as a term in logic, “unqualified, asserting absolutely,” from Late Latin categoricus, from Greek kategorikos “accusatory, affirmative, categorical,” from kategoria (see category). General sense of “explicit, unconditional” is from 1610s. Categorical imperative, from the philosophy of Kant, first recorded 1827. Related: Categorically.