Classify

How to spell classify

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce classify

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does classify mean?

1. verbTo arrange or sort people or things into groups according to shared characteristics.

Classify in a sentence

• Librarians classify each new book by subject before shelving it.

• The agency will classify these documents as confidential once they are reviewed.

Where does classify come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word was assembled in the eighteenth century from the Latin classis, which originally named one of the divisions into which the Roman population was sorted for taxation and military service, and so came to mean simply a group or rank. To that root was added the familiar verb-forming element -fy, drawn from the Latin facere, meaning 'to make' or 'to do', so the whole literally means 'to make into classes'. English took the finished form by way of the French classifier as naturalists and scientists of the Enlightenment grew obsessed with arranging plants, animals and minerals into orderly categories. The same classis lies behind everyday words such as 'class' and 'classic', the latter once meaning literature good enough for the top class. The spelling trap is the single 's' followed by the unstressed middle vowel, where writers can be tempted to double the 's' or to write the ending as -ify.

How the word is built

• classi- (from Latin classis: a class or group)
• -fy (from facere: to make, to do)