sort

• (UK) IPA^(key): /sɔːt/
• (US) IPA^(key): /sɔɹt/

• Audio (US)

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• Audio (AU)

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• Homophone: sought (in non-rhotic accents)

From Middle English sort, soort, sorte (= 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”).

sort (plural sorts)

1. A general type.
   • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 1, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:

     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.

   • 1922, Ben Travers, chapter 1, in A Cuckoo in the Nest‎:

     “[…] 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. […]”

   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 17, in The China Governess‎:

     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.

   • 2013 June 14, Sam Leith, “Where the profound meets the profane”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 1, page 37:

     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.

2. Manner; form of being or acting.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Edmund Spenser

     Which for my part I covet to perform, / In sort as through the world I did proclaim.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Richard Hooker

     Flowers, in such sort worn, can neither be smelt nor seen well by those that wear them.

   • (Can we date this quote?) William Shakespeare

     I'll deceive you in another sort.

   • (Can we date this quote?) John Milton

     To Adam in what sort / Shall I appear?

   • (Can we date this quote?) John Dryden

     I shall not be wholly without praise, if in some sort I have copied his style.

   • 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, OCLC 639762314, page 0147:

     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.

3. (obsolete) Condition above the vulgar; rank.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Shakespeare to this entry?)

4. (dated) Group, company.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Edmund Spenser

     a sort of shepherds

   • (Can we date this quote?) John Dryden

     a sort of doves

   • (Can we date this quote?) Philip Massinger

     a sort of rogues

   • (Can we date this quote?) George Chapman

     A boy, a child, and we a sort of us, / Vowed against his voyage.

5. (informal) A person evaluated in a certain way (bad, good, strange, etc.).

   This guy's a decent sort.

6. (Australia, informal) A good-looking woman.
7. An act of sorting.

   I had a sort of my cupboard.

8. (computing) An algorithm for sorting a list of items into a particular sequence.

   Popular sorts include quicksort and heapsort.

9. (typography) A piece of metal type used to print one letter, character, or symbol in a particular size and style.
10. (mathematics) A type.
11. (obsolete) Chance; lot; destiny.
    • (Can we date this quote?) William Shakespeare

      Let blockish Ajax draw / The sort to fight with Hector.

12. (obsolete) A pair; a set; a suit.

    (Can we find and add a quotation of Johnson to this entry?)

• For quotations of use of this term, see Citations:sort.

• (type): genre, genus, kind, type, variety
• (person): character, individual, person, type
• (act of sorting): sort-out
• (in computing): sort algorithm, sorting algorithm
• (typography): glyph, type
• See also Thesaurus:class

Borrowed from Old French sortir (“allot, sort”), from Latin sortire (“draw lots, divide, choose”), from sors.

sort (third-person singular simple present sorts, present participle sorting, simple past and past participle sorted)

1. (transitive) To separate according to certain criteria.
   • 2017 August 27, Brandon Nowalk, “Game Of Thrones slows down for the longest, and best, episode of the season (newbies)”, in The Onion AV Club‎:

     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.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Isaac Newton

     Rays which differ in refrangibility may be parted and sorted from one another.

2. (transitive) To arrange into some order, especially numerically, alphabetically or chronologically.
3. (Britain) To fix a problem, to handle a task; to sort out.
4. (transitive) To conjoin; to put together in distribution; to class.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Francis Bacon

     Shellfish have been, by some of the ancients, compared and sorted with insects.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Sir J. Davies

     She sorts things present with things past.

5. (intransitive) To join or associate with others, especially with others of the same kind or species; to agree.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Woodward

     Nor do metals only sort and herd with metals in the earth, and minerals with minerals.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Francis Bacon

     The illiberality of parents towards children makes them base, and sort with any company.

6. (intransitive) To suit; to fit; to be in accord; to harmonize.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Francis Bacon

     They are happy whose natures sort with their vocations.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Sir Walter Scott

     I cannot tell ye precisely how they sorted.

7. (transitive, obsolete) To conform; to adapt; to accommodate.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Shakespeare

     I pray thee, sort thy heart to patience.

8. (transitive, obsolete) To choose from a number; to select; to cull.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Chapman

     that he may sort out a worthy spouse

   • (Can we date this quote?) Shakespeare

     I'll sort some other time to visit you.

In British sense “to fix a problem”, often used in the form “I’ll get you sorted,” or “Now that’s sorted,” – in American and Australian usage sort out is used instead.

• (separate according to certain criteria): categorise/categorize, class, classify, group
• (arrange into some sort of order): order, rank

• sorted
• sorting
• sort out

• sort at OneLook Dictionary Search
• sort in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

• RTOS, RTOs, TROs, orts, rost, rots, tors

From Old Occitan sort, from Latin sortem, accusative singular of sors, from Proto-Italic *sortis, from Proto-Indo-European *ser- (“to bind”).

• (Balearic, Valencian) IPA^(key): /ˈsɔɾt/
• (Central) IPA^(key): /ˈsɔrt/

sort f (uncountable)

1. luck
2. fortune

• bona sort
• mala sort
• per sort

From Old Norse svartr (“black”), from Proto-Germanic *swartaz, from Proto-Indo-European *swordo- (“dirty, dark, black”).

• IPA^(key): [soɐ̯d̥]
• Rhymes: -ɒː

sort

1. black (absorbing most light)
2. being done without incurring taxation

• (illicit): sort arbejde, sorte penge, sort marked

sort

1. being done without incurring taxation

• arbejde sort

Borrowed from French sorte (“class, kind”), from Latin sors (“lot, fate”).

• IPA^(key): [sɒːˀd̥]

sort c (singular definite sorten, plural indefinite sorter)

1. sort, kind
2. quality
3. brand
4. (botany) cultivar

• “sort” in Den Danske Ordbog

From German Sorte.

sort (genitive sordi, partitive sorti)

1. kind, sort, brand

• IPA^(key): /sɔʁ/

• Audio

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• Homophone: sors
• Rhymes: -ɔʁ

From Old French sort, from Latin sortem, accusative singular of sors, from Proto-Italic *sortis, from Proto-Indo-European *ser- (“to bind”). Cf. also the borrowed doublet sorte.

sort m (plural sorts)

1. fate, destiny (consequences or effects predetermined by past events or a divine will)
2. lot (something used in determining a question by chance)
3. spell (magical incantation)

• sorcier
• sorte
• sortir

See sortir.

sort

1. third-person singular present indicative of sortir

• “sort” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

• sord (alternative orthography)

From Latin surdus.

sort

1. deaf

• sordine

• mut

• IPA^(key): [ˈʃort]

Borrowed from English shorts.[1]

sort (plural sortok)

1. shorts (pants worn primarily in the summer that do not go lower than the knees)

• rövidnadrág

sor +‎ -t

sort

1. accusative singular of sor

From Old French sort, from Latin sors, sortem.

sort m (plural sorts)

1. (Jersey) fate

• destinné (“fate, destiny”)

From Old Norse svartr; compare Danish sort

• svart

• IPA^(key): /suʈ/
• Rhymes: -uʈ

sort (neuter singular sort, definite singular and plural sorte, comparative sortere, indefinite plural sortest, definite plural sorteste)

1. black (colour)

Borrowed from French sorte.

• IPA^(key): /sɔʈ/
• Rhymes: -ɔʈ

sort m (definite singular sorten, indefinite plural sorter, definite plural sortene)

1. a sort, kind or type

• “sort” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

Borrowed from French sorte.

sort m (definite singular sorten, indefinite plural sortar, definite plural sortane)

1. a sort, kind or type

• “sort” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

Borrowed from French sorte.

• audio

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sort c

1. sort, kind

• slag