By aventure, or sort, or cas [chance]. Chaucer.

Let blockish Ajax draw
The sort to fight with Hector. Shak.

Which for my part I covet to perform,
In sort as through the world I did proclaim. Spenser.

Flowers, in such sort worn, can neither be smelt nor seen well by those that wear them. Hooker.

I'll deceive you in another sort. Shak.

To Adam in what sort
Shall I appear? Milton.

I shall not be wholly without praise, if in some sort I have copied his style. Dryden.

A boy, a child, and we a sort of us,
Vowed against his voyage. Chapman.

Out of sorts (Print.), with some letters or sorts of type deficient or exhausted in the case or font; hence, colloquially, out of order; ill; vexed; disturbed. -- To run upon sorts (Print.), to use or require a greater number of some particular letters, figures, or marks than the regular proportion, as, for example, in making an index.

Syn. -- Kind; species; rank; condition. -- Sort, Kind. Kind originally denoted things of the same family, or bound together by some natural affinity; and hence, a class. Sort signifies that which constitutes a particular lot of parcel, not implying necessarily the idea of affinity, but of mere assemblage. the two words are now used to a great extent interchangeably, though sort (perhaps from its original meaning of lot) sometimes carries with it a slight tone of disparagement or contempt, as when we say, that sort of people, that sort of language.

As when the total kind
Of birds, in orderly array on wing,
Came summoned over Eden to receive
Their names of there. Milton.

None of noble sort
Would so offend a virgin. Shak.

Rays which differ in refrangibility may be parted and sorted from one another. Sir I. Newton.

Shellfish have been, by some of the ancients, compared and sorted with insects. Bacon.

She sorts things present with things past. Sir J. Davies.

That he may sort out a worthy spouse. Chapman.

I'll sort some other time to visit you. Shak.

I pray thee, sort thy heart to patience. Shak.

Nor do metals only sort and herd with metals in the earth, and minerals with minerals. Woodward.

The illiberality of parents towards children makes them base, and sort with any company. Bacon.

They are happy whose natures sort with their vocations. Bacon.

Things sort not to my will. herbert.

I can not tell you precisely how they sorted. Sir W. Scott.