sort
Plural: sorts
Noun
- a category of things distinguished by some common characteristic or quality
- an approximate definition or example
- "she wore a sort of magenta dress"
- "she served a creamy sort of dessert thing"
- a person of a particular character or nature
- "what sort of person is he?"
- "he's a good sort"
- an operation that segregates items into groups according to a specified criterion
- "the bottleneck in mail delivery is the process of sorting"
- A general type.
- Manner, way; form of being or acting.
- Condition above the vulgar; rank.
- A person evaluated in a certain way.
- Group, company.
- A good-looking woman.
- An act of sorting.
- An algorithm for sorting a list of items into a particular sequence.
- A piece of metal type used to print one letter, character, or symbol in a particular size and style.
- A type.
- Fate, fortune, destiny.
- Anything used to determine the answer to a question by chance; lot.
- A full set of anything, such as a pair of shoes or a suit of clothes.
Verb
Verb Forms: sorted, sorting, sorts
- To arrange items according to kind, class, or size.
- examine in order to test suitability
- arrange or order by classes or categories
- To separate items into different categories according to certain criteria that determine their sorts.
- To arrange into some sequence, usually numerically, alphabetically or chronologically.
- To conjoin; to put together in distribution; to class.
- To conform; to adapt; to accommodate.
- To choose from a number; to select; to cull.
- To join or associate with others, especially with others of the same kind or species; to agree.
- To suit; to fit; to be in accord; to harmonize.
- To fix (a problem) or handle (a task).
- To attack physically.
- To geld.
Examples
- Before each turn, a good player will SORT their tiles to see potential words and hooks.
- good sort, bad sort
- I had a sort of my cupboard.
- If he comes nosing around here again I'll sort him!
- Popular algorithms for sorts include quicksort and heapsort.
- Sort the letters in those bags into a separate pile for each language.
- Sort those bells into a row in ascending sequence of pitch.
Origin / 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”).
Synonyms
assort, class, classify, form, kind, screen, screen out, separate, sieve, sort out, sorting, variety, categorize, character, genre, genus, glyph, group, individual, order, person, rank, sort algorithm, sort-out, sorting algorithm, type
Scrabble Score: 4
sort: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordsort: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
sort: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary