Synonyms

categorize

American

[kat-i-guh-rahyz] / ˈkæt ɪ gəˌraɪz /

especially British, categorise

verb (used with object)

to arrange in categories or classes; classify.
to describe by labeling or giving a name to; characterize.

categorize British

/ ˈkætɪɡəˌraɪz /

verb

(tr) to place in a category; classify

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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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.

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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:

categorize categorizes categorized categorizing

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

His particular brand of cultural fluency — a rapid-fire mix of food, fashion, basketball, politics and pop culture — is what made the “Gua Bao Bad Boy” impossible to categorize.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 1, 2026

To categorize the jobs as remotable or non-remotable, the bank used a commonly used index of how easily the tasks required for a given job can be done when working from home.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 1, 2026

Soon, the word became a stand-in for “catchy,” shorthand that could be used to categorize just about any song with a single word.

From Salon ● May 10, 2026

I would learn information and familiarize myself with ways to categorize it along certain topic lines.

From "March Forward, Girl" by Melba Pattillo Beals

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

These women all have something in common: They have a body mass index that categorizes them as obese or severely obese.

From Salon ● Jan. 7, 2024

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

Using the Nova classification system, researchers categorized 81% of them as ultra-processed.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 29, 2026

Some companies didn’t disclose dollar figures for each individual perk; reporters generally categorized these aggregate amounts in “other.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 25, 2026

And finally, she categorized either by their weights in the PCE or by treating each category individually.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 20, 2026

The study also categorized unemployment claims by age and found that a significant portion of claims were from those aged 36 to 65, signaling that AI’s effect doesn’t only affect early-career jobs.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 4, 2026

I began writing about the process of going from agency to agency, being categorized, being advised of my shortcomings, and having dire warnings sent my way.

From "Bad Boy" by Walter Dean Myers

Nearly four-fifths of respondents said that gas prices present some sort of strain, with 34% categorizing it as a major strain and 44% calling it a minor strain.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 28, 2026

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

Agencies must submit “contingency plans” categorizing which employees are essential on a standardized worksheet.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 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