say it: sawrt
sort is a noun and verb meaning "a category of things distinguished by some common characteristic or quality". It carries 6 recorded senses.
an approximate definition or example
“she wore a sort of magenta dress”
“she served a creamy sort of dessert thing”
a person of a particular character or nature
“what sort of person is he?”
“he's a good sort”
examine in order to test suitability
“screen these samples”
“screen the job applicants”
arrange or order by classes or categories
“How would you classify these pottery shards--are they prehistoric?”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for sort come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.