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Out of sorts

Posted by R. Berg on October 06, 2003

In Reply to: Out of sorts posted by S. Ryan on October 06, 2003

: We are familiar with the meaning but not the origin. Why "sorts?"

Probably from typesetting the old-fashioned way, where each character (e.g., lower-case italic "a") was a sort. We've discussed this before. A brief search didn't turn it up in the archives.

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