Other forms: catalogues
A catalogue is the organised list of everything a collection holds. The library catalogue, search the catalogue, a catalogue number.
This is the British spelling; American English writes catalog. In libraries and museums, cataloguing is the whole discipline of describing items so that they can be found again, and an uncatalogued collection is effectively invisible. A catalogue is also a shop's list of goods. Figuratively, a catalogue of something means a long list of it: a catalogue of errors, a catalogue of disasters.
1nouncatalogueThe organised list of everything a collection holds.
“You can search the library catalogue online to see if the book is available.”
synonyms: catalog, listing
2nounlongA long list of something bad.
“The inquiry revealed a catalogue of mistakes by the hospital staff.”
catalogue is an organised list.
Also accepted in games: catalog
Greek katalogos means an enrolment or register — kata plus legein, to pick or say. The same legein gives lecture and legible, so cataloguing and reading are the same root.
Proto-Indo-European
*leǵ-
Ancient Greek
κατάλογος — enrollment, register
Latin
catalogus
Old French
catalogue
Middle English
cathaloge
English, today
catalogue
Built from
From Middle English cathaloge, from Old French catalogue, from Latin catalogus, itself from Ancient Greek κατάλογος (“enrollment, register”), from καταλέγω (“to recount, make a list”), from κατα- (“downwards, towards”) + λέγω (“to say, to speak, to tell”). Equivalent to cata- + -logue.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA