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:
One person might describe feeling unusually cold, another might mention constant chills, while a clinician could categorize those experiences using a specific medical term.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 13, 2026
Particularly if you work across creative, intellectual or interdisciplinary worlds where people struggle to categorize what you actually “do.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 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
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
Though the technique is the exact opposite of most techniques of mysticism it probably is a mystical discipline, tending towards the experience of Immanence; but I can’t categorize any practice of the Handdarata with certainty.
From "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin
The study, published in Nature's Communications Earth & Environment, categorizes warming periods that occur ahead of and following MHWs.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 30, 2026
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
Wall Street categorizes metals as precious, base/industrial, and maybe “other” for the weird ones.
From Barron's ● Dec. 26, 2025
Four levels are used to categorizes scores: advanced, proficient, standard nearly met and standard not met.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 9, 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
While Bonta categorized those threats as bluster and blackmail, people close to Ellison said they were genuine.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 7, 2026
Using the Nova classification system, researchers categorized 81% of them as ultra-processed.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 29, 2026
And finally, she categorized either by their weights in the PCE or by treating each category individually.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 20, 2026
About 30% of the remaining spending growth was categorized as new, either by newly created programs or the expansion of existing services.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 30, 2026
Eddie looks inside boxes, and touches things I put on the big table because I haven’t categorized them yet.
From "The Wrong Way Home" by Kate O’Shaughnessy
Apps are great for tracking spending and automatically categorizing — making it easy to see that you spent this much more on food than clothes, or what you’re putting toward subscriptions.
From MarketWatch ● May 14, 2026
I often wonder: Does their categorizing need extend to the subatomic realm?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 6, 2026
About a third of the earliest records from the county had no data categorizing the type of structure, and The Times extracted that information, as best as possible, from the freehand notes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 17, 2025
That's the lower limit of categorizing objects on the Torino Scale.
From Salon ● Mar. 3, 2025
“I’m categorizing them according to attraction type,” said Marjory.
From "Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics" by Chris Grabenstein
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.
