Other forms: categorised, categorising, categorises
To categorise is to sort things into named groups. Deciding which box each thing goes in.
It is what libraries, shops and biologists spend a great deal of time doing, and the difficulty is always the things that fit two boxes or none. It takes as or into. British English spells it with an s and American English with a z. The noun is category and the adjective categorical means absolute rather than sorted, so a categorical denial is a flat one, which is a slightly surprising leap from the same root.
1verbcategoriseTo place things into named groups.
“The complaints are categorised by type.”
Also accepted in games: categorize, classify
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂ger-
French
catégorie
English
category
English, today
categorise
From category + -ise. category comes from Middle English -, from French catégorie. Late Middle English -, borrowed from French catégorie, from Middle French categorie, from Latin catēgoria (“class of predicables”), from Ancient Greek κατηγορία (“head of predicables”). a doublet of categoria.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA