Categorized

How to spell categorized

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce categorized

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does categorized mean?

1. verbArranged or sorted people or things into classes or groups according to shared characteristics.

Categorized in a sentence

• The librarian categorized every new title by subject before shelving it.

• The accountant categorized each receipt as either travel, meals, or supplies.

Where does categorized come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek katēgoria, which in everyday Athenian life meant 'an accusation' or 'a charge spoken against someone' in court, built from kata 'against' and agoreuein 'to speak publicly in the marketplace'. The philosopher Aristotle gave the term a technical second life, using it to mean a 'predication' or one of the fundamental classes into which things can be sorted, and that logical sense of grouping things by kind is what survived. Latin borrowed it as categoria, and from there French formed catégorie, which English took up as 'category' in the early 1600s. The verb 'categorize', meaning to arrange items into classes, was coined from that noun with the productive -ize suffix in the early 1700s, and 'categorized' is simply its past-tense form. A useful spelling memory is that the middle keeps the full 'categor-' of 'category', so the schwa-sounding vowels stay 'e', 'o' rather than collapsing.

How the word is built

• categor- (from Greek katēgoria: a class or predication)
• -ize (verb-forming suffix)
• -ed (past-tense ending)

British and American spelling

Categorized is the American spelling. British English spells it categorised.