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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

sort.

A general type.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/soɹt/General-American/sɔːt/Received-Pronunciation/soːt/Australia, New-Zealand/sɔɹt/Ireland, Scotland
  1. A general type.

  2. Manner, way; form of being or acting.

    archaic
  3. Condition above the vulgar; rank.

    obsolete
  4. A person evaluated in a certain way.

    informal
    good sort, bad sort
  5. Group, company.

    obsolete
  6. A good-looking woman.

    Australia · UK · informal
  7. An act of sorting.

    I had a sort of my cupboard.
  8. An algorithm for sorting a list of items into a particular sequence.

    Popular algorithms for sorts include quicksort and heapsort.
  9. A piece of metal type used to print one letter, character, or symbol in a particular size and style.

  10. A type.

  11. Fate, fortune, destiny.

    obsolete
  12. Anything used to determine the answer to a question by chance; lot.

    obsolete
  13. A full set of anything, such as a pair of shoes or a suit of clothes.

    obsolete
Where this word comes from

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”).

verb/soɹt/General-American/sɔːt/Received-Pronunciation/soːt/Australia, New-Zealand/sɔɹt/Ireland, Scotland
  1. To separate items into different categories according to certain criteria that determine their sorts.

    transitive
    Sort the letters in those bags into a separate pile for each language.
  2. To arrange into some sequence, usually numerically, alphabetically or chronologically.

    transitive
    Sort those bells into a row in ascending sequence of pitch.
  3. To conjoin; to put together in distribution; to class.

    transitive
  4. To conform; to adapt; to accommodate.

    obsolete · transitive
  5. To choose from a number; to select; to cull.

    obsolete · transitive
  6. To join or associate with others, especially with others of the same kind or species; to agree.

    intransitive
  7. To suit; to fit; to be in accord; to harmonize.

    intransitive
  8. To fix (a problem) or handle (a task).

    UK · colloquial · transitive
  9. To attack physically.

    UK · colloquial · transitive
    If he comes nosing around here again I'll sort him!
  10. To geld.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English sorten, from Old French sortir (“to allot, sort”), from Latin sortīre (“draw lots, divide, choose”), from sors.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.