Sorting

How to spell sorting

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sorting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sorting mean?

1. verbArranging items into groups or an order according to type, size, or some other criterion.
2. nounThe process or activity of putting things into order or categories.

Sorting in a sentence

• verb

  She spent the morning sorting the laundry into lights and darks.

• noun

  The post office added a night shift to speed up the sorting of letters.

• verb

  The warehouse staff are still sorting the returned parcels by postcode.

• noun

  Automated sorting has replaced much of the manual labour in the depot.

Where does sorting come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grows from the noun 'sort', which English borrowed from Old French 'sorte', meaning a class or kind of thing. The Old French word traces back to the Latin 'sors', and its inflected form 'sortem', which literally meant a lot drawn in a lottery, and by extension a person's share, fortune, or destiny. Over time the idea of 'the lot that falls to you' broadened into 'category' or 'kind', because deciding what belongs together is itself a kind of allotting. The verb 'to sort', meaning to arrange things into their proper kinds, appeared in English by the late 1300s, and adding the regular '-ing' ending produces 'sorting' for the ongoing action. The same Latin root survives in relatives such as 'assort', 'consort', and even 'sorcery', where casting lots once meant telling fortunes.

How the word is built

• sort (from Latin sors: lot, share, kind)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)