sort
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
media
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
publishing
sciences
typography
Etymology: From Middle English sort, soort, sorte (cognate Dutch soort, German Sorte, Danish sort, Swedish sort), borrowed from Old French sorte (“class, kind”), from Latin sortem, accusative form of sors (“lot, fate, share, rank, category”).
Inflected forms:
form: sorts
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: sorts
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: sorting
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: sorted
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: sorted
pos: verb
tags: past
form: no-table-tags
pos: verb
tags: table-tags
form: glossary
pos: verb
tags: inflection-template
form: sort
pos: verb
tags: infinitive
form: sort
pos: verb
tags: first-person
present
singular
form: sorted
pos: verb
tags: first-person
past
singular
form: sort
pos: verb
tags: present
second-person
singular
form: sortest
pos: verb
tags: archaic
present
second-person
singular
form: sorted
pos: verb
tags: past
second-person
singular
form: sortedst
pos: verb
tags: archaic
past
second-person
singular
form: sorts
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: sorteth
pos: verb
tags: archaic
present
singular
third-person
form: sorted
pos: verb
tags: past
singular
third-person
form: sort
pos: verb
tags: plural
present
form: sorted
pos: verb
tags: past
plural
form: sort
pos: verb
tags: present
subjunctive
form: sorted
pos: verb
tags: past
subjunctive
form: sort
pos: verb
tags: imperative
present
form: -
pos: verb
tags: imperative
past
form: sorting
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: sorted
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
Senses:
gloss: A general type.
pos: noun
examples: I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn.
“[…] the awfully hearty sort of Christmas cards that people do send to other people that they don't know at all well. You know. The kind that have mottoes like
 Here's rattling good luck and roaring good cheer, / With lashings of food and great hogsheads of beer.[…]”
The face which emerged was not reassuring.[…]. He was not a mongol but there was a deficiency of a sort there, and it was not made more pretty by a latter-day hair cut which involved eccentrically long elf-locks and oiled black curls.
Swearing doesn't just mean what we now understand by "dirty words". It is entwined, in social and linguistic history, with the other sort of swearing: vows and oaths.
gloss: Manner, way; form of being or acting.
pos: noun
tags: archaic
examples: Soon as the term of those six years shall cease,
Ye then shall hither back return again,
The marriage to accomplish vow’d betwixt you twain.
Which for my part, I covet to perform,
In sort as through the world I did proclaim,
That whoso kill’d that monster (most deform)
And him in hardy battle overcame,
Should have mine only daughter to his Dame […]
Such is that argument whereby they that wore on their heads garlands are charged as transgressors of nature’s law, and guilty of sacrilege against God the Lord of nature, inasmuch as flowers, in such sort worn can neither be smelt nor seen well by those that wear them; and God made flowers sweet and beautiful, that being seen and smelt unto, they might so delight.
I’ll deceive you in another sort
But to Adam in what sort
Shall I appeer? shall I to him make known
As yet my change, and give him to partake
Full happiness with mee, or rather not,
But keep the odds of Knowledge within my power
Without copartner?
I acknowledge, with Segrais, that I have not succeeded in this attempt, according to my desire: yet I shall not be wholly without praise, if in some sort I may be allow’d to have copied the Clearness, the Purity, the Easiness and the Magnificence of his stile.
Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, of errand not wholly obvious to their fellows, yet of such sort as to call into query alike the nature of their errand and their own relations. It is easily earned repetition to state that Josephine St. Auban's was a presence not to be concealed.
With the might of that throw Goldry’s wrath departed from him and left him strengthless, in such sort that he reeled as he went from the wrastling ground.
gloss: Condition above the vulgar; rank.
pos: noun
tags: obsolete
examples: “What think you, Captain Fluellen? is it fit this soldier keep his oath?”
“He is a craven and a villain else, an’t please your majesty, in my conscience.”
“It may be his enemy is a gentleman of great sort, quite from the answer of his degree.”
“Though he be as good a gentleman as the devil is, as Lucifer and Belzebub himself, it is necessary, look your grace, that he keep his vow and his oath.”
gloss: A person evaluated in a certain way.
pos: noun
tags: informal
examples: good sort, bad sort
There is no problem with this and he seems to be a decent sort with very good reflexes. I will have Felix replaced with him when we get back to Washington because he is more acceptable.
Amo, he is the prince. And he is a good sort. You, My Husband, should be among his circle
One doesn't need to be Einstein to realize he is a bad sort / My wife always said as much.
gloss: Group, company.
pos: noun
tags: obsolete
examples: a sort of shepherds suing of the Chace
a sort of doves were housed too near their hall
What good got you by wearing out your feet,
To run on scurvy errands to the poor,
and to bear mony to a sort of rogues
And lousy prisoners?
A boy, a child, and we a sort of us,
Vowed against his voyage, yet admit it thus!
gloss: A good-looking woman.
pos: noun
tags: Australia
UK
informal
gloss: An act of sorting.
pos: noun
examples: I had a sort of my cupboard.
gloss: An algorithm for sorting a list of items into a particular sequence.
pos: noun
examples: Popular algorithms for sorts include quicksort and heapsort.
The fastest general algorithm we have considered that sorts keys in a stable manner is the list merge sort, but it does not use minimum storage
gloss: A piece of metal type used to print one letter, character, or symbol in a particular size and style.
pos: noun
examples: Green managed to recover a total of 151 sorts (the name for individual pieces of type) out of a possible 500,000.
gloss: A type.
pos: noun
gloss: Fate, fortune, destiny.
pos: noun
tags: obsolete
examples: For he is groſſe and like the maſſie earth,
That mooues not vpwards, nor by princely deeds
Doth meane to ſoare aboue the highest ſort.
gloss: Anything used to determine the answer to a question by chance; lot.
pos: noun
tags: obsolete
examples: No, make a lottery;
And, by device, let blockish Ajax draw
The sort to fight with Hector.
gloss: A full set of anything, such as a pair of shoes or a suit of clothes.
pos: noun
tags: obsolete
gloss: To separate items into different categories according to certain criteria that determine their sorts.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: Sort the letters in those bags into a separate pile for each language.
And seeing the Rays which differ in Refrangibility may be parted and sorted from one another, and that either by Refraction..., or by Reflexion..., and then the several sorts apart at equal Incidences suffer unequal Refractions,...; it's manifest that the Sun's Light is an heterogeneous Mixture of Rays..., as was proposed.
"Is there a man among ye has the Gaelic? ... Is there a man among ye can speak English even? ... Is there a man among ye at all? Ye gang o' lasceevious auld de'ils, decked oot like weemin, in spite o' yer hairy long whuskers, full beards and full skirts, ye deceitful besoms. Whuskers and petticoats wi' the vices o' both and the virtues o' neither. I'll sorrt ye." And there were sounds of alarums and excursions within.
Jaime finally leaves her [Cersei], walking right past his imminent executioner, and rides out of King’s Landing, finally neatly sorting our humans into good and evil and Bronn.
gloss: To arrange into some sequence, usually numerically, alphabetically or chronologically.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: Sort those bells into a row in ascending sequence of pitch.
gloss: To conjoin; to put together in distribution; to class.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: Shellfish have been, by some of the ancients, compared and sorted with insecta.
For when she sorts things present with things past
And thereby things to come doth oft foresee;
When she doth doubt at first, and chuse at last,
These acts her owne, without her body bee.
gloss: To conform; to adapt; to accommodate.
pos: verb
tags: obsolete
transitive
examples: I pray thee, sort thy heart to patience.
gloss: To choose from a number; to select; to cull.
pos: verb
tags: obsolete
transitive
examples: To send his mother to her father's house, that he may sort her out a worthy spouse
I'll sort some other time to visit you.
gloss: To join or associate with others, especially with others of the same kind or species; to agree.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: The illiberality of Parents in allowance towards their children is an harmefull error: makes them base; acquaints them with shifts, makes them sort with meane companie; and makes them surfet more, when they come to plenty.
Nor do Metalls only sort and herd with Metalls in the Earth : and Minerals with Minerals : but both indifferently and in common together: Iron with Vitriol, with Alum, with Sulphur: Copper with Sulphur, with Vitriol, &c. yea Iron, Copper, Lead, Nitre, Sulphur, Vitriol, and perhaps some more in one and the same Mass.
gloss: To suit; to fit; to be in accord; to harmonize.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: They are happie men, whose natures sort with their vocations, otherwise they may say Multum incola fuit anima mea; when they converse in those things they doe not affect.
I cannot tell ye precisely how they sorted; but they agreed sae right that Donald was invited to dance at the wedding in his Highland trews, and they said that there was never sae meikle siller clinked in his purse either before or since.
gloss: To fix (a problem) or handle (a task).
pos: verb
tags: UK
colloquial
transitive
examples: ‘Does rewilding sort climate change? Yes!’: UK expert says nature can save planet and not harm farming [title]
gloss: To attack physically.
pos: verb
tags: UK
colloquial
transitive
examples: If he comes nosing around here again I'll sort him!
gloss: To geld.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
Synonyms: character
individual
person
type
Derived words: all sorts
in sort
out of sorts
sorta
sort of
that's your sort
copy sort
cycle sort
good sort
mergesort
middling sort
missort
picture sort
sortal
sort code
topological sort
alphasort
archaeosortase
besort
cubesort
immunosort
pick-and-sort
presort
re-sort
resort
serosort
Shellsort
sortability
sortable
sortase
sortation
sorted
sorting
sortkey
sort oneself out
sort out
sort the wheat from the chaff
sort through
sort-while-pick
subsort
Timsort
unsort
Translations: