Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[Jessica1651]

Dear teachers:

I found three words in the dictionary: "type","kind" and "sort".
They all have the same meaning, but do they have different usage?
Thank you for your explantion in advance.

Best wishes,
Jessica

[redset]

In casual use they're interchangeable, type is the most formal. They have some specific usages in certain fields (like type in biology), and there are some phrases where we tend to use a particular word:

'I need to be around my own kind' ('I need to be around people like myself' - any of them can be used in a negative sense though e.g. 'I don't like your type/sort/kind'. Kind is often used as a euphemism for race, when people are saying something racist but they want to be able to pretend they weren't.)

'He's not my type!' ('He's not the kind of person I'm usually attracted to.')

Those are the two that come to mind. There are also a few other meanings for each word where you obviously can't use one of the others, such as type as in lettering.

[Jessica1651]

Dear redset:
Thanks for your prompt reply. It helped me a lot!!

Best wishes,
Jessica