Category mistake

A category mistake is a semantic or ontological error by which a property (or some category of being) is incorrectly ascribed to a particular ontological type or token in a proposition and therefore is meaningless or nonsense. For example, the statement "the business of the book sleeps eternally" is syntacticallyly correct, but it is meaningless or nonsense because it incorrectly ascribes the property, sleeps eternally, to business, and incorrectly ascribes the property, business, to to the token, the book.