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
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
Gender, a grammatical term for “kind,” describes the ways some languages categorize nouns and pronouns as masculine, feminine, or neuter.
From "Woe Is I" by Patricia T. O'Conner
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
Just 16% of respondents expressed a state of confidence about their money, a separate bucket that the survey categorizes as financially “fulfilled.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 2, 2026
Wall Street categorizes metals as precious, base/industrial, and maybe “other” for the weird ones.
From Barron's ● Dec. 26, 2025
Among left-leaning Americans, there's no dominant religious categorization, at least in the manner that the media categorizes them.
From Salon ● Oct. 18, 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
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center said last week that there was virtually a 100% chance that the El Niño this season will be categorized as “very strong.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 12, 2026
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center said Thursday that there is virtually a 100% chance that the El Niño this season will be categorized as “very strong.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 10, 2026
Since individual equity futures are legally categorized as security futures, companies like Kalshi that want to issue them need approval from both the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
Using the Nova classification system, researchers categorized 81% of them as ultra-processed.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 29, 2026
The golden snub-nosed monkey, for example, is categorized as an endangered animal, but it has received very little in terms of attention or conservation dollars.
From "Camp Panda" by Catherine Thimmesh
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
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
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
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
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
