categorize
Americanverb (used with object)
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categorizes,
present (3rd person singular)
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categorized,
past participle, past
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categorizing
present participle
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to arrange in categories or classes; classify.
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to describe by labeling or giving a name to; characterize.
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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categoristnoun
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categorizationnoun
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decategorizationnoun
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subcategorizationnoun
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decategorizeverb (used with object)
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miscategorizeverb (used with object)
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recategorizeverb (used with object)
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miscategorizedadjective
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uncategorizedadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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categorizesimple
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categorizessimple
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have categorizedperfect
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has categorizedperfect
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am categorizingprogressive
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are categorizingprogressive
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is categorizingprogressive
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have been categorizingperfect progressive
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has been categorizingperfect progressive
Past
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categorizedsimple
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had categorizedperfect
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was categorizingprogressive
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were categorizingprogressive
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had been categorizingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of categorize
First recorded in 1695–1705; categor(y) + -ize
Explanation
If you decided to categorize your wardrobe, you could sort it by type (pants or shirts), or by color. To categorize is to put something into a category. When you think of categorizing things, imagine taking a pile of marbles and putting them into little boxes by color. You are sorting things by how they are alike. Scientists categorize animals and plants by their properties. Doctors categorize illnesses by whether they are caused by viruses or bacteria. In movies, high school students are often categorized as jocks, popular kids, troublemakers, and geeks.
Vocabulary lists containing categorize
Vocabulary of the Common Core
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Content Summary G.2: Regionalization
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Content Summary 5.1: Causes of the Atlantic Revolutions
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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:
Large language models such as GPT and Gemini are changing that equation by allowing researchers to process and categorize vast amounts of text more consistently and quickly.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 13, 2026
He talked about spending time in Mexico and realizing how much depth and labor went into dishes that diners elsewhere might casually categorize as “Mexican food.”
From Salon ● Sep. 1, 2026
Ms. Dixon even tries to categorize the different types of artistic offense.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026
That includes the way scientists categorize species within Homo as well as Australopithecus and Paranthropus, all of which lived during the past 5 million years.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 20, 2026
Then I categorize every item as many different ways as I can think of.
From "Things Not Seen" by Andrew Clements
Taiwan’s Olympic athletes must compete as “Chinese Taipei” and the World Trade Organization categorizes the semiconductor powerhouse as a “separate customs territory.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 3, 2026
Naylor categorizes about 30% of shark species as endangered, largely due to overfishing.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 19, 2026
Wall Street categorizes metals as precious, base/industrial, and maybe “other” for the weird ones.
From Barron's ● Dec. 26, 2025
The International Union for Conservation of Nature red list categorizes lions as vulnerable to extinction.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 22, 2025
Sister Miriam Joseph* categorizes the relation of the trivial arts as follows: logic is concerned with the thing-as-it-is-known; grammar is concerned with the thing-as-it-is-symbolized; rhetoric is concerned with the thing-as-it-is-communicated.
From "Words Like Loaded Pistols" by Sam Leith
Cargo is never categorized as imports and only goes through minimal customs checks before being shifted between aircrafts, officials said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 2, 2026
Using the Nova classification system, researchers categorized 81% of them as ultra-processed.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 29, 2026
It has remained on the menu despite being categorized as a “limited time” item when it first launched in 2022.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 11, 2026
Teledyne, often categorized as an industrial-sensing company, is embedded in the counterdrone detection chain through systems already operational in active theaters.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 29, 2026
Sculpture is categorized according to whether it is carved or modeled and whether it is a relief or a free-standing statue.
From "History of Art, Volume 1" by H.W. Janson
The software also sends reminder emails and phone alerts to prompt people to keep up with categorizing transactions that are automatically pulled in or inputting new ones manually.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 11, 2026
I often wonder: Does their categorizing need extend to the subatomic realm?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 6, 2026
That's the lower limit of categorizing objects on the Torino Scale.
From Salon ● Mar. 3, 2025
During early assessments of impact risk, Apophis reached a rating of Torino Scale 4, which is a scale for categorizing potential Earth impact events.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 19, 2025
Stopping before the narrow garage, he sniffed the fumes from Paradise with great sensory pleasure, the protruding hairs in his nostrils analyzing, cataloguing, categorizing, and classifying the distinct odors of hot dog, mustard, and lubricant.
From "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
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.
