sort, verb

Origin:
EnglishShow more Special sense of general English sort to separate or distinguish (from something else).
Diamond-mining
To search diamondiferous ground (by hand) for diamonds; also in the phrr. to sort dry, to dry-sort, in the same sense.
a. intransitive.
1873 F. Boyle To Cape for Diamonds 111Lonely little camps occurred, consisting perhaps of a family waggon with two or three gipsy tents around,..mostly occupied by boers, who carry their stuff home for wives and children to ‘sort’...Screened from the merciless sun by an old umbrella, sits the master of the claim, ‘sorting’.
1873 F. Boyle To Cape for Diamonds 111 [see erf sense c].
1976 B. Roberts Kimberley 44One of his African labourers told him that there was talk in the camp of a solitary white man working ‘out there’,..‘dry-sorting and finding diamonds every day’.
b. transitive.
1873 [see sense a].
1882 J. Nixon Among Boers 163At first the diamondiferous soil was sorted ‘dry’, a system which allowed many valuable stones to escape the eye of the sorter; now all sorting is done with the aid of water.
1893 T. Reunert Diamonds & Gold 56In the very early days of the Fields, when water was scarce and costly, the diamonds were won by ‘dry-sorting’ the pulverised ground, and the resulting ‘debris’, scattered over a large area of the townships, has since been nearly all washed with more or less profit by the workers.
1913 [see sortings sorting].
To search diamondiferous ground (by hand) for diamonds; also in the phrr. to sort dry, to dry-sort, in the same sense.
Derivatives:
Hence sorter  noun, one who performs this task.
1873 F. Boyle To Cape for Diamonds 127When nothing is left but the dry little lumps like fine gravel, and the diamonds, he unhooks the sieve and carries its contents to a neighbouring table on which it is poured before the panting sorter.
1876 F. Boyle Savage Life 14A bucket of ‘stuff’ is poured upon the boards. The sorter grasps a ‘scrape’ of iron,..with this he rakes towards him a double handful of the shingle.
1913 [see sortings sorting].
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18731976

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sorter

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sorghum, nounn.sorting, verbal nounvbl n.
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