Etymologically
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assortment

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Pronunciation

  • UK: /əˈsɔːtmənt/[1]

Etymology

It is formed from English assort + -ment,[2][3][4][5] probably influenced by the earlier French assortiment (1532);[6][4] the OED also compares Italian assortimento.[2] Assort (1490) is from Middle French assortir, from Old French assorter (“to assort, match”),[6][3][7] formed from a- (“to”) (from Latin ad-) and sorte (“kind”),[2][3][8] from Latin sors (“lot; share; rank, category”), the source of sort.[3][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The action of sorting things into kinds or classes: 1611, in Cotgrave's French–English dictionary.[2][7][3]

Semantic evolution

From the act of sorting, the word moved to its results: a group of things of the same kind is recorded in 1767 in the OED (in Adam Smith) and in 1759 in Etymonline,[2][3] and a set made up of various kinds of one thing, or of various things, the usual modern sense, in 1791.[2][3] Johnson (1773) gave both "the act of classing or ranging" and "a mass or quantity properly selected and ranged".[9] The Shorter Oxford marks the sense "action of assorting" as archaic.[4] In forestry it is a class of timber formed by sorting.[2]

Timeline

  • 1611 – the action of assorting; classification into kinds.[2][7]
  • 1767 – a group of things of the same sort.[2] Etymonline dates this sense to 1759.[3]
  • 1791 – a set of various kinds of things.[2][3]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A collection of various kinds of things; a mixture or variety: The shop sold an odd assortment of lamps, rugs and old maps.[10][7][2]
  2. A group or collection of things of one kind.[7][2]
  3. (archaic) The act of assorting; arrangement into kinds.[10][7][4][2]

Word family

  • reassortment

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  6. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
  7. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  9. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  10. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins