sorting, verbal noun

Origin:
As sort.
Diamond-mining
1.
a. The process of searching diamondiferous ground (by hand) for diamonds. Also attributive.
1871 J. Mackenzie Ten Yrs N. of Orange River 95After the washing has been performed the ‘sorting’ process begins. A rude table has been constructed upon which the pebbles are placed. The novice performs the sorting slowly and carefully; but the experienced worker..goes through the operation with great rapidity.
1977 [see sense b].
b. With qualifying word: dry-sorting, see quotation 1913; also attributive.
1913 C. Pettman Africanderisms 156Dry sorting,..The earliest and most primitive method of searching for diamonds adopted at the Diamond Fields. It consisted in passing the diamondiferous ground through a succession of hand-sieves, and then passing the residuum over a sorting table.
1919 M.M. Steyn Diary 173In 1917 I pulled down the building and had the ground, which I had carted there for a floor in 1872, washed, and found £160 value of diamonds! That shows how diamonds were thrown away in the old ‘dry-sorting’ days!
2. combination
sorting table, a table or board on which the final stage of sorting diamondiferous gravel is performed; see also grease table.
1872 C.A. Payton Diamond Diggings 8The gravel being thus thoroughly cleansed by this double process of sifting and washing, the large stones in the top sieve are hastily glanced over,..and the other sieve or sieves are taken out, and the contents emptied on to the ‘sorting table,’ which is an ordinary table of deal, with or without legs, or a smooth sheet of iron or other inexpensive metal...Diamonds..show out brilliantly, and can very seldom be missed on a sorting table.
1873 F. Boyle To Cape for Diamonds 79Here and there is a ‘canteen’ of dirty canvas, or a plank-built ‘store’...But such habitations are rare. Rarer still is the ‘sorting table.’
1876 F. Boyle Savage Life 13The topmost box is emptied, after a glance that assures the digger there is no monstrous diamond among the stones. The next box, of smaller pebbles, is examined very much more carefully, for in it will be found any gem over twenty carats or so. This looked over and thrown away, the contents of the last box are poured into a bucket, and carried to the ‘sorting table.’
1887 J.W. Matthews Incwadi Yami 176It may be as well to briefly describe the ‘sorting table’. The top of a packing case balanced on a heap of gravel often had to serve this purpose in the early days of the river diggings, and beside it the digger knelt, crouched or sat.
1891 R. Smith Great Gold Lands 72When he is satisfied that the heavier contents had been separated from the lighter stones, he deftly turns over the sieve on to a flat board termed a ‘sorting table’.
1893 T. Reunert Diamonds & Gold 58The heavy deposit, with the diamonds, passes through the screens into pointed boxes below, whence it is drawn off at the lowest point of the box and taken to the sorting tables.
1896 M.A. Carey-Hobson At Home in Tvl 231Whenever I was called away and had to leave my sorting-table to a servant, I felt sure that the illicit diamond buyers had more of my diamonds than I had.
1931 G. Beet Grand Old Days 84The sorting tables had..to be placed out on the veld, but as near the Kopje as possible. These places afterwards came to be known as ‘depositing floors’.
1968 J.T. McNish Rd to El Dorado 240The gravel left behind..was tipped out upon a sorting table and treated in the usual way when searching for diamonds.
1977 S. Afr. Panorama Aug. 18Built with windows on one side only and tilted so that no direct sunlight ever strikes the sorting tables, Harry Oppenheimer House accommodates some sophisticated equipment for the sorting of diamonds.
1981 Daily Dispatch 25 June 1He had removed a bucket of washed gravel from the pulsator sieve without paying much attention to what he was doing. At the sorting table he poured out the contents of the bucket. With a ‘sudden shock’ he noticed a diamond the size of a R1 coin.
The process of searching diamondiferous ground (by hand) for diamonds. Also attributive.
dry-sorting, see quotation 1913; also attributive.
Derivatives:
Hence sortings  noun  noncount, the residue of diamondiferous ground remaining after the sorting process.
1873 F. Boyle To Cape for Diamonds 111The mounds of sortings are now close by thronged with busy men, black and white.
1913 C. Pettman Africanderisms 462Sortings,..The refuse material after it has undergone the above process. Occasionally a small diamond would be over-looked by the ‘sorter’; the ‘sortings’ were eagerly ‘re-sorted’ by others in the hope of finding some such overlooked stone.
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sorting table
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sort, verbv.sosatie, nounn.
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