catalog

KAT-uh-lawg/ˈkætəlɔɡ/UKKAT-uh-log/ˈkætəlɒɡ/

Pluralcatalogs

Verbcatalogs, cataloging, cataloged

UK spellingcatalogue

10 meanings of catalog

Practice

1
store magazinenouncountable
A magazine in which a retailer describes the products it sells, so that readers can order them for delivery.
She ordered a winter coat from the catalog, and it arrived within a week.
Many mail-order companies have replaced their printed catalogs with websites.
2
library listnouncountable
A list of all the publications held by a library.
The university library's online catalog lists more than two million titles.
A misfiled card in the old catalog sent her to the wrong shelf.
Similarindex
3
nouncountable
A systematic list of things such as books, names, or pictures.
The botanist drafted a catalog of the island's plants, adding notes on each species.
The gallery printed a catalog of the photographs in the exhibition.
Similarlist, inventory, register, index
Note
The sense the others branch from, and its Greek root is a spoken list: katálogos, "enrollment, register", comes from katalégō, "to recount, make a list", with légō, "to say, tell", inside it. English took it through Late Latin catalogus and Old French catalogue, whose ending the longer spelling keeps. The idea of a system has stayed with it: a catalog is ordered, never just a jotted list.
4
add to recordsverbtransitive
To enter an item in a catalog, or to add items such as books to an existing catalog.
Staff catalog each new acquisition within a week of its arrival.
The archive has cataloged only a fraction of the letters it received last year.
Similarrecord, list, register, index, log
5
verbtransitive
To compile a catalog of a group of things.
The inquiry will catalog the failures that led to the bridge collapse.
Researchers spent a decade cataloging the insects of the rain forest.
Similardocument, list, record, itemize
Note
Where entering an item adds to a list, this verb makes the list, and it stretches easily from objects to findings: an inquiry catalogs failures, researchers catalog insects. The past tense is cataloged, or catalogued in the longer spelling, as when RAIL (2023) writes that the consequences "were catalogued by the Royal Commission for Environmental Pollution in 1994."
6
artist's songsnouncountable
A complete list of the songs of a recording artist or a composer.
Her catalog runs to more than three hundred songs, many of them written for other singers.
Fans compiled a full catalog of the songwriter's work, including tracks that were never released.
Similarsongbook
Note
Musicians and labels use it for the songs as much as for the list: an artist's back catalog is the earlier work still on sale behind each new release, and a songwriter's catalog can change hands as a single body of rights. When a deal is reported as the sale of a catalog, it is the songs, not a document, that are sold.
7
string of troublesnounfigurativelycountable
A whole string of unwelcome or unpleasant things, often much alike, such as mistakes or failures.
A catalog of defensive mistakes cost the team the match.
The inquiry described a catalog of failures that allowed the fire to spread.
Similarstring, series, litany, succession, list
Note
The figure works by irony: a word for a careful, ordered list is turned on things that went wrong, so a catalog of errors sounds like an inquiry's tally rather than a complaint. It stays singular and takes of with a plural noun, as in a catalog of basic errors or of defensive mistakes, and it is at home in match reports and official findings. Litany is its nearest neighbor.
8
college guidenouncountable
A book that a college, university, or other institution publishes at regular intervals, officially describing the institution, including its history and the courses and degrees it offers.
According to the university catalog, the history major requires twelve courses.
The college revises its catalog each spring before registration opens.
Note
An American campus word: here the catalog is the official reference on what a program requires, consulted before registration and revised at regular intervals. It usually names its school or level, as in the college catalog, the university catalog or the graduate catalog, and "according to the catalog" is how a question about requirements gets settled.

Less common meanings

9
file listnoundatedcountable
A list of the files stored in a computer directory.
The program reads the disk's catalog into memory before loading any files.
The program generates a catalogue of the files on the cartridge selected by the user, reads the catalogue into memory and erases the cartridge copy, so that an up-to-date copy is always generated.
1983, “Helpline”, in Sinclair User
Similardirectory
Note
A word from early home computing, when each disk or microdrive cartridge kept a small catalog of its files: on the Sinclair Spectrum the command that displayed it was CAT, and software for the BBC machines handled a double catalog. Later systems settled on directory and directory listing, so in this sense the word now sounds dated.
10
verb
In stamp collecting, to sort stamps or assess their value by referring to a catalog.

Practice

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Origin

From Middle English cathaloge, from Old French catalogue, from Late Latin catalogus, itself from Ancient Greek κατάλογος (katálogos, “enrollment, register”). That comes from καταλέγω (katalégō, “to recount, make a list”), from κατα- (kata-, “downwards, towards”) + λέγω (légō, “to say, to speak, to tell”); it is equivalent to cata- + -logue.