catalog
Americannoun
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catalogs
plural
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a list or record, as of items for sale or courses at a university, systematically arranged and often including descriptive material.
a stamp catalog.
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something that contains such a list or record, as a book, leaflet, or file.
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a list of the contents of a library or a group of libraries, arranged according to any of various systems.
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any list or record.
a catalog of complaints.
verb (used with object)
verb (used without object)
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to produce a catalog.
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to have a specified price as listed in a catalog.
This model catalogs for $49.95.
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to offer merchandise in a mail-order catalog.
adjective
Usage
What does catalog mean? A catalog is a list or record of items. It is sometimes spelled catalogue. It commonly refers to a list of things being offered, such as items for sale or courses at a school. The point of such a catalog is typically to arrange the information in an orderly way—often with descriptions—so that the items can be easily found. The word often refers to a printed copy of the list, especially in the context of items available for purchase from a particular company. Catalog can also be used to refer to a collection of works, such as by a particular artist, as in I love every album in her catalog. A card catalog is a file containing information about the books and other materials held in a library. Card catalogs were once commonly physical cabinets of drawers containing cards but now often exist as online catalogs. Sometimes, catalog is used in a very general way as another way of saying list, as in a catalog of complaints. Catalog can also be used as a verb meaning to record items with a list, as in Please catalog all of the new titles. Example: The course catalog lists all of the classes that are available to take.
Synonym Usage
See list 1.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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catalogernoun
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catalogistnoun
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cataloguernoun
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cataloguistnoun
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miscatalogverb (used with object)
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miscatalogueverb (used with object)
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recatalogverb (used with object)
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catalogicadjective
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catalogicaladjective
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catalogisticadjective
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noncatalogadjective
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noncatalogueadjective
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of catalog
First recorded in 1425–75; late Middle English cataloge, from Late Latin catalogus, from Greek katálogos “a register” (akin to katalégein “to count up”), equivalent to kata- “down, against, back” + -logos reckoning; see cata-
Explanation
A catalog is a book that lists many things: the most common type of catalog is for a store. A catalog is an organized list that appears in book or pamphlet form. The Sears catalog tells you all the things you can buy at Sears, along with pictures of the items and what they cost. But you can also use catalog to mean any kind of listing. In an argument, you might say, "Why don't you just make a catalog of all my faults!" When you're making a catalog of any kind, you're cataloging.
Vocabulary lists containing catalog
ESL Library Vocabulary
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Researching Strategies and Using the Library
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Put It This Way: Synonyms for "Describe"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
There’s a $30 exhibition catalog in the gift shop.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2026
After that, I started browsing the library website differently: less like a catalog, more like a streaming service with unusually eccentric licensing agreements.
From Salon ● Sep. 6, 2026
"It will be the biggest catalog of astronomical objects anybody's ever produced, and it will help us understand how common are solar systems like our own," Dave Content, Roman's technical manager, told AFP.
From Barron's ● Aug. 30, 2026
She was fiercely protective of her songwriting catalog at a time when even the Beatles and Rolling Stones failed to maintain control.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 29, 2026
An image flashed behind my eyes of Perilee pointing out the $3 oak rockers in the Monkey Ward catalog.
From "Hattie Big Sky" by Kirby Larson
A common destination is a Facebook page that catalogs local mug shots with names, ages, arrest dates and charges.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 2, 2026
Astronomers will use those observations to build large catalogs and then apply physical models to determine what those catalogs reveal about the structure and evolution of the universe.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 28, 2026
Most of them, he says, are “sensationalist catalogs of his darkest misdeeds.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 10, 2026
The online retailer started as a family-run business in 2004, when Tatyana Kim, a former English teacher from the suburbs of Moscow, started a business reselling clothing from German mail-order catalogs while on maternity leave.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 9, 2026
He’s putting himself through the Art Institute here by being a male model for JCPenney catalogs and things like that.
From "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky
The fossil, cataloged as MGB-512, is about 50 centimeters long and is housed at the Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 15, 2026
Fieldwork does produce new fossils, but important discoveries can also emerge from specimens that have already spent years stored, cataloged and protected in museums.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 21, 2026
It comes from poorly cataloged and measured “positive feedbacks.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 11, 2026
Crawling into my hotel bed that evening, I cataloged the damage.
From Slate ● Jun. 5, 2026
His vast fossil loot from South America was being unpacked, preserved, cataloged, and organized; whole museums could be built around it.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Astronomers have spent decades carefully cataloging stars near the Sun, yet white dwarfs in systems like these remain difficult to detect.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 15, 2026
Buyers and sellers are seeing the biggest differences compared with last year in West Palm Beach, which saw a near-40% increase in pending sales, Redfin data cataloging the nation’s largest metropolitan areas show.
From Barron's ● May 26, 2026
His repeated attempts to flex expensive restaurant bills and hardman tough talk land like a waterlogged handkerchief after he’s spent song after song cataloging all the specific ways we’ve all hurt his feelings.
From Salon ● May 21, 2026
He left 15 years ago and has spent much of the time since cataloging how he thought the institution was going astray.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 30, 2026
Once she’d found half a dozen, she went to Harry Dibdin at the Bodleian Library with another cataloging query.
From "The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage" by Philip Pullman
Marshall in 2024, catalogued the system’s due process pathologies and all but invited a broader challenge.
From Slate ● Jul. 28, 2026
Three hundred years later, Gray’s Anatomy by Henry Gray reinforced the impression that the body had finally been catalogued, indexed and neatly organized – a system mapped and fully explained.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 21, 2026
Sloth jaws and sabertooth fangs and a truly astonishing amount of ancient vertebrae — all of it will be swaddled, catalogued and crated for the next two years.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 6, 2026
"Winnie the Pooh is all of us," said Kevin Kern, senior manager of research at the Walt Disney Archives in Burbank, California, where all kinds of Pooh paraphernalia are neatly catalogued.
From Barron's ● Mar. 10, 2026
He observed and catalogued details outside his main object.
From "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
Buyers and sellers are seeing the biggest differences compared with last year in West Palm Beach, which saw a near-40% increase in pending sales, Redfin data cataloguing the nation’s largest metropolitan areas show.
From Barron's ● May 26, 2026
“The cataloguing and photographing of the notebook was a valid part of the inventory search,” he wrote.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 18, 2026
In cataloguing Finn versus France, there are highs and lows.
From BBC ● Mar. 5, 2026
A graduate program in archival science at Pratt helped him gather focus, while turning him on to the infinite history of sound data and cataloguing.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 8, 2025
Thinking of venison, his mind had gone about cataloguing the sitting room and his mind nudged him, saying, “Hey, there’s something wrong here—something strange.”
From "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
