Etimology
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”).
noun
sort (plural sorts)
A general type.
Manner; form of being or acting.
(obsolete) Condition above the vulgar; rank.
(informal) A person evaluated in a certain way (bad, good, strange, etc.).
(dated) Group, company.
(British, informal) A good-looking woman.
An act of sorting.
(computing) An algorithm for sorting a list of items into a particular sequence.
(typography) A piece of metal type used to print one letter, character, or symbol in a particular size and style.
(mathematics) A type.
(obsolete) Chance; lot; destiny.
(obsolete) A full set of anything, such as a pair of shoes, or a suit of clothes.
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.
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 sortShall I appeer? shall I to him make knownAs yet my change, and give him to partakeFull happiness with mee, or rather not,But keep the odds of Knowledge within my powerWithout 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.
"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."
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.
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 roguesAnd lousy prisoners?
A boy, a child, and we a sort of us,Vowed against his voyage, yet admit it thus!
I had a sort of my cupboard.
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
For he is groſſe and like the maſſie earth,That mooues not vpwards, nor by princely deedsDoth meane to ſoare aboue the highest ſort.
No, make a lottery; And, by device, let blockish Ajax draw The sort to fight with Hector.
Related words
synonyms
(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
hyponyms
bead sort
binary tree sort
blort sort
bogo-sort
bozo sort
bozo sort
bubble sort
bucket sort
cocktail sort
comb sort
counting sort
distribution sort
drunk man sort
gnome sort
heapsort
in-place sort
insertion sort
introsort
introspective sort
library sort
mergesort
merge sort
monkey sort
pigeonhole sort
quicksort
radix sort
selection sort
shell sort
smoothsort
spaghetti sort
stochastic sort
stooge sort
stupid sort
timsort
Etimology
From Middle English sorten, from Old French sortir (“to allot, sort”), from Latin sortīre (“draw lots, divide, choose”), from sors.
verb
sort (third-person singular simple present sorts, present participle sorting, simple past and past participle sorted)
(transitive) To separate items into different categories according to certain criteria that determine their sorts.
(transitive) To arrange into some sequence, usually numerically, alphabetically or chronologically.
(transitive) To conjoin; to put together in distribution; to class.
(transitive, obsolete) To conform; to adapt; to accommodate.
(transitive, obsolete) To choose from a number; to select; to cull.
(intransitive) To join or associate with others, especially with others of the same kind or species; to agree.
(intransitive) To suit; to fit; to be in accord; to harmonize.
(British, colloquial, transitive) To fix (a problem) or handle (a task).
(British, colloquial, transitive) To attack physically.
(transitive) To geld.
Examples
Synonyms: categorize, class, classify, group
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.
Synonyms: order, rank
Sort those bells into a row in ascending sequence of pitch.
Shellfish have been, by some of the ancients, compared and sorted with insecta.
For when she sorts things present with things pastAnd 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.
I pray thee, sort thy heart to patience.
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.
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.
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.
Synonym: sort out
‘Does rewilding sort climate change? Yes!’: UK expert says nature can save planet and not harm farming [title]
Synonym: sort out
If he comes nosing around here again I'll sort him!