Sorter
adv, noun ·2 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A person employed to sort.
"But soon one notices, first in ones and twos, and then in larger groups, men who are very much alive at this hour in the morning, the sorters for the Caledonian, and Edinburgh sections of the "Down Special"; mail is piled high on the platforms, and the postal men glance occasionally towards the platform intermediate signals. By this time the calling-on arm is pulled off, and a few minutes later in comes the train, unannounced by the loud-speakers, to the mystification of many travellers."
- 2 a machine for sorting things (such as punched cards or letters) into classes wordnet
- 3 A machine or algorithm that performs sorting.
- 4 a clerk who sorts things (as letters at the post office) wordnet
- 1 Pronunciation spelling of sorta alt-of, not-comparable, pronunciation-spelling
Example
More examples"But soon one notices, first in ones and twos, and then in larger groups, men who are very much alive at this hour in the morning, the sorters for the Caledonian, and Edinburgh sections of the "Down Special"; mail is piled high on the platforms, and the postal men glance occasionally towards the platform intermediate signals. By this time the calling-on arm is pulled off, and a few minutes later in comes the train, unannounced by the loud-speakers, to the mystification of many travellers."
Etymology
From sort + -er.
Related phrases
More for "sorter"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.