categorize
Americanverb (used with object)
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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:
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
Drucker explores the different roles inside every business, which I would categorize as builders, sellers and measurers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 20, 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
Apps like Rocket Money can link bank accounts, categorize spending habits and flag unused subscriptions.
From MarketWatch ● Mar. 31, 2026
The comment was so like Bobby in that he tended to remember and categorize people through their chess games, not necessarily anything else.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
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
The International Union for Conservation of Nature red list categorizes lions as vulnerable to extinction.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 22, 2025
She already has some ideas, which she categorizes as “baddie florals.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 5, 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
And finally, she categorized either by their weights in the PCE or by treating each category individually.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 20, 2026
Kashkari categorized the labor market as decent, but mostly moving sideways.
From Barron's ● Jun. 26, 2026
To put Recidiviz’s products in place, secure data must be gathered from a variety of sources, tagged and categorized in different forms, and distributed into accessible dashboards.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 18, 2026
A spokesperson for Booking.com says: "If a particular region can be categorized as disputed or impacted by conflict, we add information to our platform to help ensure that travellers can make a well-informed choice."
From BBC ● May 24, 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
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
They started categorizing me with sad and sentimental music.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 19, 2025
That's the lower limit of categorizing objects on the Torino Scale.
From Salon ● Mar. 3, 2025
Children can explore the timbre, production, and material of the instruments to come up with their own ways of categorizing them.
From "Music and the Child" by Natalie Sarrazin
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.
