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Sort   /sɔrt/   Listen
noun
Sort  n.  Chance; lot; destiny. (Obs.) "By aventure, or sort, or cas (chance)." "Let blockish Ajax draw The sort to fight with Hector."



Sort  n.  
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. (Obs.)
4.
A chance group; a company of persons who happen to be together; a troop; also, an assemblage of animals. (Obs.) "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.
6.
pl. (Print.) Letters, figures, points, marks, spaces, or quadrats, belonging to a case, separately considered.
Out of sorts (Print.), 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 (Print.), 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.
Synonyms: Kind; species; rank; condition. Sort, Kind. Kind originally denoted things of the same family, or bound together by some natural affinity; and hence, a class. Sort signifies that which constitutes a particular lot of parcel, not implying necessarily the idea of affinity, but of mere assemblage. the two words are now used to a great extent interchangeably, though sort (perhaps from its original meaning of lot) sometimes carries with it a slight tone of disparagement or contempt, as when we say, that sort of people, that sort of language. "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."



verb
Sort  v. t.  (past & past part. sorted; pres. part. sorting)  
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.
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. (R.) "I pray thee, sort thy heart to patience."



Sort  v. i.  
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."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sort" Quotes from Famous Books



... induce him to change his mind. Writing in the end of 1843 to his friend Watt, he had said: "There's no outlet for me when I begin to think of getting married but that of sending home an advertisement to the Evangelical Magazine, and if I get very old, it must be for some decent sort of widow. In the meantime I am too busy to think of any thing of the kind." But soon after the Moffats came back from England to Kuruman, their eldest daughter Mary rapidly effected a revolution in Livingstone's ideas of matrimony. ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... o' the right sort. What say, Peter?" Peter was only too glad. The prospect of getting into a warm house was enough inducement, even without the further bliss of a couple ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke

... out, tightly laced, and with a strip of crochet in the neck of her dress. What sort of oil or fatty substance she had plastered down her hair with may be left unsaid; but Silla in her brown straw hat and a plain white collar, felt for a moment insignificant beside her. But she quickly took her friend's arm; now they were off to ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie

... afford to sink shafts and wait for years before the gold appeared. These men, therefore, had to take small wages for toiling at a most laborious occupation. But most of them had learnt trades of some sort in Europe; and the idea sprang up that if the colony prevented boots from coming into it from outside there would be plenty of work for the bootmakers; if it stopped the importation of engines there would no longer be any reason why engineers should work like navvies at the bottom of gold ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland

... make their feelings her own. Phoebe, on the other hand, in her serious poems held more closely to her own experiences. Both the sisters were very fond of children, though in a different way, Alice feeling for them a sort of mother-love, while Phoebe always felt toward them as though they were comrades. It is the genuine love for children which makes the children's stories and poems of Alice ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester


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