I was trying to explain the difference between “sort of” and “kind of”. This was very difficult to do. The phrases are nearly identical. However, they are not entirely identical; we would not use both of them if they were.

The best I could come up with is the following: “sort of” implies a brotherly (or sibling) relationship; “kind of” implies a parental (or hierarchical) relationship. So when comparing a pear and apple, we would say, “an Asian pear is sort of an apple”. When talking about Tomatoes we say, “tomatoes are kind of a fruit”. All apples and pears are fruit, but not all fruit are apples or pears. A fruit is either an apple a pear, or some other fruit. Likewise, tomatoes are neither apples, pears or (classically speaking) fruit. They might be both tomatoes and fruit, but they are definitely not both apples and tomatoes.

So a tomato is kind of a fruit but sort of an apple.

What is interesting is how we would use this. If I am explaining shogi to an American, whether I say it is sort of like chess or kind of like chess hints at how I think about the game. Using sort of implies that it is more distinct; kind of implies more that it is a derivative of chess.

So with this all being said, Spaghetti is kind of like Ramen. Mochi is sort of like Mozzarella cheese. And Lasagna is just amazing.

This entry was posted on 2006-6-17 at 20:04 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.