nity (which now includes almost every computer science
major and almost everybody who has ever used or heard about
object-oriented programming languages) a class has a very
specific meaning:  it is a kind of data type that has
associated methods.

&gt;Im afraid that this sense of 'class' has already been in widespread 
&gt;use throughout at least one of the broader technical ontology 
&gt;communities for about a decade now. Check out the literature on 
&gt;description logics and such ontological 'standards'