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:
Wilson’s catalog showcased the full breadth of her native Mississippi’s musical heritage, drawing primarily from jazz but spanning every foundational American genre.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 2, 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
Last year, Forbes valued Parton’s catalog at $120 million and estimated that her total worth was $450 million.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 29, 2026
Overall, Parton’s music catalog had 19.8 million Spotify streams on Aug. 25, the most in her catalog’s history and a 1,300% jump from the day before.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 28, 2026
Cari was clipping pictures from a catalog, and Beto was reading a thick book.
From "Out of Darkness" by Ashley Hope Pérez
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
These catalogs are designed to make specialized scientific investigations easier by organizing and enhancing information derived from the main survey data.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 14, 2026
Most of them, he says, are “sensationalist catalogs of his darkest misdeeds.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 10, 2026
Ms. Brown catalogs the patient loads, paperwork and hospital hierarchies that wear nurses down.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 21, 2026
We ride to Sistersville and I haul all those catalogs out to the Jeep while Dad cases mail.
From "Shiloh" by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
“We got it cataloged immediately, which means someone can order it up in the reading room tomorrow, and that’s warp speed for us,” she added.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 1, 2026
To identify the new species, researchers analyzed 121 cataloged fossil remains, including skulls, teeth, and jaw fragments from dozens of individuals.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 13, 2026
Crawling into my hotel bed that evening, I cataloged the damage.
From Slate ● Jun. 5, 2026
They were stored among the museum’s collection of more than eight million objects, millions of which had never been individually cataloged.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 21, 2026
My worries about high school, if they were to be cataloged, could mostly be filed under one general heading: Am I good enough?
From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama
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
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
By the end of his college sophomore year, he was meticulously cataloging them.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 3, 2026
The surge of immigration detention flights at Minneapolis-Saint Paul airport spurred plane spotter Nick Benson to shift from tracking rare and unusual aircraft to cataloging the removal of detainees from Minnesota.
From Barron's ● Jan. 29, 2026
In one of the boxes was a tattered, fabric-covered logbook from the Office of Indian Affairs cataloging the names of guardians during the Reign of Terror.
From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann
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
Both these opposition leaders catalogued SNP shortcomings during the last Holyrood question time before the election.
From BBC ● Mar. 29, 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
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
It's also our most powerful way of cataloguing the world's happenings.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 2, 2025
As well as his stellar cataloguing, Halley had observed a transit of Mercury across the face of the Sun while he was in St Helena.
From "The Scientists" by John Gribbin
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.
