Word.ws English Dictionary

universal sorter

universal sorter noun: a mechanism whereby uncountable nouns are made countable and abstract.

Noun

universal sorter

  1. A mechanism whereby uncountable nouns are made countable and abstract.
    • The conceivability of this machine, that we might call the "Universal Sorter", indicates that in principle any "mass noun" can be used as a count noun. Of course, it is true that a "mass noun" like 'wine' undergoes a shift in meaning when used as a count noun...1981, Hendrik Bunt, The formal semantics of mass terms, Amsterdam (dissertation), →OCLC, page 11

Origin of universal sorter

Compound of universal + sorter; first used in print in or around 1981 by Hendrik Bunt (see quote below) modeled on universal grinder.

Questions about universal sorter

What does universal sorter mean?
Universal sorter means a mechanism whereby uncountable nouns are made countable and abstract.
What part of speech is universal sorter?
Universal sorter is a noun.

Words near universal sorter in the dictionary

  1. universal sets
  2. universal shunt
  3. universal shunts
  4. universal solvent
  5. universal solvents
  6. universal sorter
  7. universal suffrage
  8. Universal Time
  9. universal Turing machine
  10. universal Turing machines
  11. Universal Unitarian

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: universal sorter (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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