sorts

Noun

sort (plural sorts)

1. A general type.
   • I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big...1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC
2. (archaic) Manner, way; form of being or acting.
   • Soon as the term of those six years shall cease,
     Ye then shall hither back return again,
     The marriage to accomplish vow’d betwixt you twain.
     Which for my part, I covet to perform,
     In sort as through the world I did proclaim,
     That whoso kill’d that monster (most deform)
     And him in hardy battle...1590, Edmund Spenser, “(please specify the book)”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
3. (obsolete) Condition above the vulgar; rank.
   • “What think you, Captain Fluellen? is it fit this soldier keep his oath?”
     “He is a craven and a villain else, an’t please your majesty, in my conscience.”
     “It may be his enemy is a gentleman of great sort, quite from the answer of his degree.”
     “Though he be as good a gentleman as the devil is, as...c. 1599, William Shakespeare, Henry V
4. (informal) A person evaluated in a certain way.
   • good sort, bad sort
5. (obsolete) Group, company.
   • a sort of shepherds suing of the Chace1595, Edmund Spenser, The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser
6. (Australia, UK, informal) A good-looking woman.

See all 23 meanings of sort