sort

n. [ F. sorie (cf. It. sorta, sorte), from L. sors, sorti, a lot, part, probably akin to serere to connect. See Series, and cf. Assort, Consort, Resort, Sorcery, Sort lot. ] 1. A kind or species; any number or collection of individual persons or things characterized by the same or like qualities; a class or order; as, a sort of men; a sort of horses; a sort of trees; a sort of poems. [ 1913 Webster ]

2. Manner; form of being or acting. [ 1913 Webster ]

Which for my part I covet to perform,
In sort as through the world I did proclaim. Spenser. [ 1913 Webster ]

Flowers, in such sort worn, can neither be smelt nor seen well by those that wear them. Hooker. [ 1913 Webster ]

I'll deceive you in another sort. Shak. [ 1913 Webster ]

To Adam in what sort
Shall I appear? Milton. [ 1913 Webster ]

I shall not be wholly without praise, if in some sort I have copied his style. Dryden. [ 1913 Webster ]

3. Condition above the vulgar; rank. [ Obs. ] Shak. [ 1913 Webster ]

4. A chance group; a company of persons who happen to be together; a troop; also, an assemblage of animals. [ Obs. ] “A sort of shepherds.” Spenser. “A sort of steers.” Spenser. “A sort of doves.” Dryden. “A sort of rogues.” Massinger. [ 1913 Webster ]

A boy, a child, and we a sort of us,
Vowed against his voyage. Chapman. [ 1913 Webster ]

5. A pair; a set; a suit. Johnson. [ 1913 Webster ]

6. pl. (Print.) Letters, figures, points, marks, spaces, or quadrats, belonging to a case, separately considered. [ 1913 Webster ]

Out of sorts (Print.), with some letters or sorts of type deficient or exhausted in the case or font; hence, colloquially, out of order; ill; vexed; disturbed. --
To run upon sorts (Print.), to use or require a greater number of some particular letters, figures, or marks than the regular proportion, as, for example, in making an index. [ 1913 Webster ]

Syn. -- Kind; species; rank; condition. -- Sort, Kind. Kind originally denoted things of the same family, or bound together by some natural affinity; and hence, a class. Sort signifies that which constitutes a particular lot of parcel, not implying necessarily the idea of affinity, but of mere assemblage. the two words are now used to a great extent interchangeably, though sort (perhaps from its original meaning of lot) sometimes carries with it a slight tone of disparagement or contempt, as when we say, that sort of people, that sort of language. [ 1913 Webster ]

As when the total kind
Of birds, in orderly array on wing,
Came summoned over Eden to receive
Their names of there. Milton. [ 1913 Webster ]

None of noble sort
Would so offend a virgin. Shak. [ 1913 Webster ]