Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use sort in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, verb

Sort means a general type. Example: “I had a sort of my cupboard.”

Examples of sort by meaning

nounA general type.

  • Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC
  • He was not a mongol but there was a deficiency of a sort there, and it was not made more pretty by a latter-day hair cut which involved eccentrically long elf-locks and oiled black curls.1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 17, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC
  • It is entwined, in social and linguistic history, with the other sort of swearing: vows and oaths.2013 June 14, Sam Leith, “Where the profound meets the profane”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 1, page 37

nounManner, way; form of being or acting.

  • Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, of errand not wholly obvious to their fellows, yet of such sort as to call into query alike the nature of their errand and their own relations.1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
  • With the might of that throw Goldry’s wrath departed from him and left him strengthless, in such sort that he reeled as he went from the wrastling ground.1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC, page 27

nounA person evaluated in a certain way.

  • good sort, bad sort
  • There is no problem with this and he seems to be a decent sort with very good reflexes.1999 October, Heinrich Müller, Müller Journals: 1948-1950, The Washington years
  • And he is a good sort.2014, Mykel D. Myles, The Long Night Of The Demon, →ISBN

nounAn act of sorting.

  • I had a sort of my cupboard.

nounAn algorithm for sorting a list of items into a particular sequence.

  • Popular algorithms for sorts include quicksort and heapsort.
  • The fastest general algorithm we have considered that sorts keys in a stable manner is the list merge sort, but it does not use minimum storage2014, Donald E. Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming. Sorting and Searching, →ISBN

nounA piece of metal type used to print one letter, character, or symbol in a particular size and style.

  • Green managed to recover a total of 151 sorts (the name for individual pieces of type) out of a possible 500,000.2024 May 5, Holly Black, “Remnants of a Legendary Typeface Have Been Rescued From the River Thames”, in artnet

verbTo separate items into different categories according to certain criteria that determine their sorts.

  • Sort the letters in those bags into a separate pile for each language.

verbTo arrange into some sequence, usually numerically, alphabetically or chronologically.

  • Sort those bells into a row in ascending sequence of pitch.

More sentences with sort

  • It's too early for this sort of thing. I'm not awake yet.From the entry early
  • This app has a bug: when you try to sort a large spreadsheet, it closes.From the entry close
  • On the whole, they seem to be of the decent sort.From the entry of
  • He's the sort of lowlife who snorts coke and refers to it as his girl.From the entry girl
  • This app has a bug: when you try to sort a large spreadsheet, it shuts.From the entry shut
  • There are many sorts of nuts: peanuts, cashews, pistachios, Brazil nuts and more.From the entry nut
  • The grid column header displays a sort glyph indicating an ascending or descending ordering.From the entry glyph
  • The truth is that I know the guy had African skin and a shirt of some sort.From the entry African
  • This shed is full of junk – will you help me sort it out?From the entry junk
  • She is working some sort of amazing burgundy chiffon situation with gold piping.From the entry situation
  • That's the sort of woolly thinking that causes wars to start.From the entry woolly
  • That's the sort of wooly thinking that causes wars to start.From the entry wooly
  • Some sort of mental and social pathology seemed to sweep over the discourse later that autumn.From the entry pathology
  • It’s a hairy problem, and will probably take several weeks to sort out.From the entry hairy
  • On my first day in the office, I was tasked with sorting a pile of invoices.From the entry task
  • People do that sort of thing every day, without ever stopping to reflect on the consequences.From the entry reflect
  • I need some sort of cutting utensil to get through this shrink wrap.From the entry cutting
  • Time will tell whether he is a crackpot or a genius for promoting that sort of idea.From the entry crackpot
  • The customers were sorted by name and then subordered by number of purchases.From the entry suborder
  • I have sorted out the problems and am now on top of the situation.From the entry on top of
  • You should write in to the agony aunt; she'll sort it out for you.From the entry agony aunt
  • Let's get everything sorted into the right drawers and not split hairs about subdividing it further yet.From the entry split hairs
  • That is one slick bicycle: it has all sorts of features!From the entry slick
  • You've been sitting there all week. It's time you sorted yourself out and pulled your finger out!From the entry pull one's finger out
  • It's a bit confused at the moment, I'll try to sort it out later.From the entry sort out
  • Could you call Dave and sort out a meeting for tomorrow?From the entry sort out

Meaning of sort

  1. noun A general type.
  2. noun Manner, way; form of being or acting.
  3. noun Condition above the vulgar; rank.

Full definition of sort

Questions about sort in a sentence

How do you use sort in a sentence?
Sort is used as a noun and verb. For example: “I had a sort of my cupboard.”
What is a short sentence with sort?
“good sort, bad sort”
What does sort mean?
Sort means a general type.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sort (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use sort in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/sort. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.