Categorizing

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The process of sorting items into designated groups according to common traits or properties
2. An organized approach to grouping entities that share specific features for clarity and usefulness
3. The action of arranging things into specific groups according to shared features

Etymology: Aristotle's "katēgoria" was a philosophical term for a predicate, something said of a subject, and it was built from "katēgorein", "to accuse" or "to speak against" in a court of law. The Greek verb itself was formed from "kata", "down" or "against", and "agoreuein", "to speak in the assembly" or "to harangue", so the original sense was accusation in a public forum. Through Late Latin "catēgoria", the noun reached Middle French as "categorie" and then Middle English as "category", where it still carried the logical and classificatory sense of a set of things grouped by shared properties. "Categorize" is a much later and simpler creation. It was formed in English by adding the verbal suffix "-ize", which came through Late Latin "-izare" from Greek "-izein", to the noun "category". The suffix turns a noun into a verb meaning to put something into the class the noun names, so "categorizing" is simply the act of sorting things into such classes.

Synonyms: classifying, sorting, arranging, organizing, systematizing

Antonyms: disorganizing, confusing, mixing, scattering, disbanding