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:
The lawsuit goes on to catalog a list of similarities between “Sovereign Nation” and “Yellowstone,” stating, “What then appeared in ‘Yellowstone’ was not merely another Western about land or family.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 23, 2026
He was an established artist with a proven catalog of his own.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 12, 2026
What the new catalog and Mr. Robbins’s winsome biography should be thanked for is their attention to another facet of Zurbarán’s art—his facility with still life.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026
The battle over Warner Brothers began last year, when media giants Netflix and Paramount went to war over the famed movie studio and its prized back catalog.
From Barron's ● Jul. 20, 2026
She flips the pages in her catalog and settles down next to me in the grass.
From "Dread Nation" by Justina Ireland
Among them are catalogs covering black holes, stars, and interstellar gas, along with new visualizations and scientific tools designed to help users explore the enormous dataset.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 14, 2026
Ms. Brown catalogs the patient loads, paperwork and hospital hierarchies that wear nurses down.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 21, 2026
But retail businesses have in many cases lost the consumer trust that originally made their catalogs a promise of consistency and quality.
From Salon ● Jul. 18, 2026
Compulsion Games, known for "South of Midnight" and Double Fine Productions, maker of "Psychonauts," will become independent, retaining their intellectual property and game catalogs.
From Barron's ● Jul. 6, 2026
For now, I drool over seed catalogs and study up on how to build a fence.
From "Hattie Big Sky" by Kirby Larson
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
Crawling into my hotel bed that evening, I cataloged the damage.
From Slate ● Jun. 5, 2026
Nearly 50 butterflies are cataloged in these pages through rinpun, a technique that uses adhesive to transfer the scales from butterfly wings onto paper.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 10, 2026
Over five years, researchers cataloged marine life and tested mining impacts in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a vast region of the Pacific Ocean located between Mexico and Hawaii.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 2, 2026
But in the heart of this chaos, Tyler had half a decade’s pencil shavings, cataloged by year.
From "Educated" by Tara Westover
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
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 2013, von Konrat led a team of botanists and volunteers to survey the region, cataloging grasses, trees, and mosses in search of a location that matched the plant material found on the shoes.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 1, 2026
The exhibition begins with “Uncovering Hidden Gems,” a selection of acquisitions that entered the collection early and lacked cataloging information.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 12, 2025
“Yes. Their index and cataloging operations are most impressive.”
From "The Bletchley Riddle" by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
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
Later historians described this engraving and, despite having never seen the painting, catalogued its existence.
From Barron's ● Nov. 30, 2025
But, by working through each action-unit combination, Ekman and Friesen identified about three thousand that did seem to mean something, until they had catalogued the essential repertoire of human facial displays of emotion.
From "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell
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
That cataloguing is indispensable, but the words and concepts we use for it matter.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 2, 2025
They were cool, measuring, as faceted as finely cut jewels; they traveled over her face methodically, cataloguing her eyelashes, her nose, her mouth, her chin.
From "Ash" by Malinda Lo
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.
