Sorted

How to spell sorted

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sorted

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sorted mean?

1. verbPast tense of sort: arranged or separated items into an order or into groups.
2. verbPast tense of sort: dealt with, organised, or put into a satisfactory state.
3. adjectiveInformal British term meaning fully organised, taken care of, or in good order.

Sorted in a sentence

• verb

  She sorted the invoices into monthly folders before the audit.

• verb

  The technician sorted the network fault within an hour.

• adjective

  With the tickets booked and the hotel paid, the trip was completely sorted.

• verb

  The warehouse staff sorted the parcels by destination overnight.

• verb

  Once the deposit cleared, the booking was sorted.

• adjective

  After years of saving, his retirement finances were finally sorted.

Where does sorted come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin noun sors, with the stem sort-, which literally meant a 'lot' as in the object drawn by chance, and by extension a person's share, fate, or condition. In Latin this developed into sortiri, 'to draw lots' and then 'to allot or distribute'. It passed into Old French as sortir and the related noun sorte, meaning 'kind' or 'class', and English took up 'sort' in the 1300s with the sense of a group of things sharing a quality. From the noun came the verb 'to sort', meaning to arrange things by kind, and 'sorted' is simply its past tense and past participle. In modern British usage 'sorted' has also become a casual adjective meaning that a matter has been dealt with or that a person is well organised, a sense that grew popular in the late twentieth century. The doubled idea of arranging by 'kind' still echoes the original Latin notion of allotting each thing its proper share.

How the word is built

• sort (from Latin sors, sortis: lot, share, fate)
• -ed (past tense / participle suffix)