types

Noun

type (plural types)

1. A grouping based on shared characteristics; a class.
   • This type of plane can handle rough weather more easily than that type of plane.

   Synonyms:

   category, class, genre, group, kind, nature, sort, stripe, tribe, hue

2. An individual considered typical of its class, one regarded as typifying a certain profession, environment, etc.
   • Look, with these gals that want to buy it, most of them are older, dignified. Social Register types, you know what I mean? They can't be trotting down to Times Square to pick out the merchandise. They got to have some kind of, uh, middleman.1969, Waldo Salt, Midnight Cowboy, spoken by Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), United Artists
3. An individual that represents the ideal for its class; an embodiment.
   • Altogether he was the type of low ruffianism — as ill-conditioned a looking brute as ever ginned a hare.1872, Mary Rose Godfrey, Loyal, volume 3, page 116
4. (uncountable) Such types collectively, or a set of type of one font or size.
5. (uncountable) Text printed with such type, or imitating its characteristics.
   • The headline was set in bold type.
6. Something, often a specimen, selected as an objective anchor to connect a scientific name to a taxon; this need not be representative or typical.
   • ...thus Stearn has designated Linnaeus as the type specimen of Homo sapiens2009 March 20, Greg Mayer, “Who is the type specimen of Homo sapiens?”, in Why Evolution Is True

See all 22 meanings of type