sort

Pronunciation

• IPA: UK /sɔːt/, US /sɔːrt/^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English sorte,^[2][3] borrowed from Old French sorte (“class, kind”),^[2][4] from an altered form of Latin sors (“lot, fate; share; rank, category”) (accusative sortem),^[2][5][6] from Proto-Indo-European *ser- (“to line up”),^[2][3] perhaps because in ancient Italy lots were drawn from objects lined up in a row.^[4] The verb is from Old French sortir “to allot, sort”, from Latin sortīrī “to draw lots, divide, choose”,^[2][4][5] and partly from the noun or from assort.^[2][4] It is related to consort and sorcery.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

“A kind, a group of people or things of the same type”: about 1380,^[7] or about 1390 in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.^[4] The verb, “to allot, arrange”, is implied in 1358.^[4]

Semantic evolution

In Vulgar Latin the sense moved from what is allotted by fate to “fortune, condition”, and then to “rank, class, order”.^[2] The classical sense, a person's lot or fate, existed in Middle English from about 1250 but is obsolete.^[2][7] A kind of thing, a pattern or design, is from the mid-15th century.^[2] The verb meant “to arrange by type or quality” in the mid-14th century and “to classify” about 1400,^[2] and “to resolve a problem” by 1948.^[2] Out of sorts, from the 1620s, perhaps meant “out of stock”,^[2] and sort of, expressing hesitation, is by 1790.^[2] A sort in typesetting, one piece of type, is from the 1660s,^[2] and the sorting of data in computing by 1958.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1250 – one's lot, fate (obsolete).^[7]
• 1358 – verb, to allot, arrange.^[4]
• c. 1380 – a kind, class.^[7]
• mid-15th century – a kind of thing.^[2]
• 1620s – out of sorts.^[2]
• 1660s – a piece of type.^[2]
• 1790 – sort of.^[2]
• 1948 – to resolve a problem.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A group of people or things of the same kind; a type.
2. A person of a particular character: a good sort.
3. (printing) A single piece of type in a font.
4. (computing) An arrangement of data in order.

Verb

1. To arrange by kind, class or size; to classify.
2. To separate from others: sort out the bad apples.
3. (sort out) To resolve a problem or confusion.

Word family

• sortable
• sorter
• sortably
• sorta
• missort
• presort
• sortation
• subsort

Related words

• assort
• consort
• sorcery
• sorcerer
• series

Usage notes

Sort of as a hedge, “to some extent”, is colloquial, and is sometimes written sorta.^[2] In the Lake District a sort was a point in an early form of football, scored by kicking the ball against the goal wall.^[8]

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
4. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)