Sort
Sort , noun
[French sorl, Latin sors, sortis. See Sort kind.]
Chance; lot; destiny. [Obsolete]
By aventure, or sort, or cas [chance].
Let blockish Ajax draw
The sort to fight with Hector.
Sort , noun
[French sorie (compare Italian sorta, sorte), from Latin sors, sorti, a lot, part, probably akin to serere to connect. See Series, and compare Assort, Consort, Resort, Sorcery, Sort lot.]
1.
A kind or species; any number or collection of individual persons or things characterized by the same or like qualities; a class or order; as, a sort of men; a sort of horses; a sort of trees; a sort of poems.
2.
Manner; form of being or acting.
Which for my part I covet to perform,
In sort as through the world I did proclaim.
Flowers, in such sort worn, can neither be smelt nor seen well by those that wear them.
I'll deceive you in another sort.
To Adam in what sort
Shall I appear?
I shall not be wholly without praise, if in some sort I have copied his style.
3.
Condition above the vulgar; rank. [Obsolete] — Shakespeare
4.
A chance group; a company of persons who happen to be together; a troop; also, an assemblage of animals. [Obsolete]
A sort of shepherds.
A sort of steers.
A sort of doves.
A sort of rogues.
A boy, a child, and we a sort of us,
Vowed against his voyage.
5.
A pair; a set; a suit. — Johnson
6.
(Printing) Letters, figures, points, marks, spaces, or quadrats, belonging to a case, separately considered.
As when the total kind
Of birds, in orderly array on wing,
Came summoned over Eden to receive
Their names of there.
None of noble sort
Would so offend a virgin.
Collocations (2)
Out of sorts (Printing) , with some letters or sorts of type deficient or exhausted in the case or font; hence, colloquially, out of order; ill; vexed; disturbed.
To run upon sorts (Printing) , to use or require a greater number of some particular letters, figures, or marks than the regular proportion, as, for example, in making an index.
Sort , transitive verb
1.
To separate, and place in distinct classes or divisions, as things having different qualities; as, to sort cloths according to their colors; to sort wool or thread according to its fineness.
Rays which differ in refrangibility may be parted and sorted from one another.
2.
To reduce to order from a confused state. — Hooker
3.
To conjoin; to put together in distribution; to class.
Shellfish have been, by some of the ancients, compared and sorted with insects.
She sorts things present with things past.
4.
To choose from a number; to select; to cull.
That he may sort out a worthy spouse.
I'll sort some other time to visit you.
5.
To conform; to adapt; to accommodate. [Rare]
I pray thee, sort thy heart to patience.
Sort , intransitive verb
1.
To join or associate with others, esp. with others of the same kind or species; to agree.
Nor do metals only sort and herd with metals in the earth, and minerals with minerals.
The illiberality of parents towards children makes them base, and sort with any company.
2.
To suit; to fit; to be in accord; to harmonize.
They are happy whose natures sort with their vocations.
Things sort not to my will.
I can not tell you precisely how they sorted.