King James Bible Dictionary

SORT, noun [Latin sors, lot, chance, state, way, sort This word is form the root of Latin sortior; the radical sense of which is to start or shoot, to throw or to fall, to come suddenly. Hence sore is lot, chance, that which comes or falls. This sense of sort is probably derivative, signifying that which is thrown out, separated or selected.]

1. A kind or species; any number or collection of individual persons or thing characterized by the same or like qualities; as a sort of men; a sort of horses; a sort of trees; a sort of poems or writings. sort is not a technical word, and therefore is used with less precision or more latitude than genus or species in the sciences.

2. Manner; form of being or acting. Flowers, in such sort worn, can neither be smelt not seen well by those that wear them. To Adam in what sort shall I appear?

3. Class or order; as men of the wiser sort or the better sort; all sorts of people. [See Def. 1.]

4. Rank; condition above the vulgar. [Not in use.]

5. A company or knot of people. [Not in use.]

6. Degree of any quality. I shall not be wholly without praise, if in some sort I have copied his style.

7. Lot.

8. A pair; a set; a suit.

SORT, verb transitive

1. To separate, as things having like qualities from other things, and place them in distinct classes or divisions; as, to sort cloths according to their colors; to sort wool or thread according to its fineness. Shell fish have been, be some of the ancients, compared and sorted with insects. Rays which differ in refrangibility may be parted and sorted from one another.

2. To reduce to order from a state of confusion. [See supra.]

3. To conjoin; to put together in distribution. The swain perceiving by her word ill sorted, that she was wholly from herself transported-

4. To cull; to choose from a number; to select. That he may sort her out a worthy spouse.

SORT, verb intransitive

1. To be joined with others of the same species. Nor do metals only sort with metals in the earth, and minerals with minerals.

2. To consort; to associate. The illiberality of parents towards children, makes them base and sort with any company.

3. To suit; to fit. They are happy whose natures sort with their vocations.

4. To terminate; to issue; to have success. [Not in use.]

5. To fall out. [Not in use.]

SORT'ABLE, adjective

1. That may be sorted.

2. Suitable; befitting.

SORT'AL, adjective Pertaining to or designating a sort. [Not in use.]

SORT'ANCE, noun Suitableness; agreement. [Not in use.]

SORT'ILEGE, noun [Latin sortilegium; sors, lot, and lego, to select.] The act or practice of drawing lots. [Sortilegy is not used.]

SORTILEGIOUS, adjective Pertaining to sortilege.

SORTI'TION, [Latin sortitio.] Selection or appointment by lot.

SORT'MENT, noun

1. The act of sorting; distribution into classes of kinds.

2. A parcel sorted. [This word is superseded by assortment, which see.]