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 feels conflicted about using the word “queer” to categorize his work, but only largely because he does not want his pieces to be reduced to tacky, “kitsch-ified” representations of Latinidad.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 9, 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
Many natives, seeking to categorize the newcomers, were open to the possibility that they might belong to the realm of the supernatural.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
FlyDubai categorizes airports in terms of difficulty, pilots say, with Tel Aviv’s airport ranking as one of the easier destinations in the airline’s network and not requiring major experience.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 7, 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
Yeh categorizes sweet salads with affection and a wink: cookie salads, Jell-O salads, candy bar salads, fluffs.
From Salon ● Apr. 27, 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
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center has said there’s virtually a 100% chance that the El Niño this season will be categorized as “very strong.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 20, 2026
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
Over the years, the ubiquity of “More Than a Feeling” unfairly categorized “Boston” as an arena-rock tourist trap.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 15, 2026
Using the Nova classification system, researchers categorized 81% of them as ultra-processed.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 29, 2026
Of all the black employees working in research at Langley in the early 1960s, there were still only five categorized as engineers and sixteen with the title of mathematician.
From "Hidden Figures" by Margot Lee Shetterly
This is someone who recently wrote a paper categorizing the ways AI might kill everyone, applying a mathematician’s instinct for order to the apocalypse.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 1, 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
For men, same-sex socialization must also deal with the conventional oppression against homosexuality — a categorizing term invented when Caillebotte was 20 and in common usage by the time he died.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 4, 2025
That's the lower limit of categorizing objects on the Torino Scale.
From Salon ● Mar. 3, 2025
Stopping before the narrow garage, he sniffed the fumes from Paradise with great sensory pleasure, the protruding hairs in his nostrils analyzing, cataloguing, categorizing, and classifying the distinct odors of hot dog, mustard, and lubricant.
From "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
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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.
