type

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A number of people or things having in common traits or characteristics that distinguish them as a group or class: synonym: kind.
• noun A person or thing having the features of a group or class.
• noun An example or a model having the ideal features of a group or class; an embodiment.
• noun A person regarded as exemplifying a particular profession, rank, or social group.
• noun A figure, representation, or symbol of something to come, such as an event in the Old Testament that is believed to foreshadow another in the New Testament.
• noun Biology The type specimen, type species, or type genus, which serves as the basis for the name of a species, genus, or family.
• noun A small block of metal or wood bearing a raised letter or character on the upper end that leaves a printed impression when inked and pressed on paper.
• noun Such pieces considered as a group.
• noun Printed or typewritten characters; print.
• noun A size or style of printed or typewritten characters; a typeface.
• noun A pattern, a design, or an image impressed or stamped onto the face of a coin.
• intransitive verb To write (something) using a typewriter.
• intransitive verb To input (something) manually on an electronic device, especially by using a keyboard.
• intransitive verb To assign to a category; classify or characterize.
• intransitive verb To determine the antigenic characteristics of (a blood or tissue sample).
• intransitive verb To typecast.
• intransitive verb To write with a typewriter or computer keyboard.
• idiom ((one's) type) A person to whom one should be sexually attracted or romantically inclined.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To exhibit or constitute a type of; typify.
• To reproduce in type, or by impression from types, as with a type-writer.
• noun A distinguishing mark or sign; a classifying stamp or emblem; a mark or an object serving for a symbol or an index, or anything that indicates office, occupation, or character.
• noun Something that has a representative or symbolical significance; an emblem, or an emblematic instance.
• noun Specifically, a prefigurement; aforeshadowing of, or that which foreshows, some reality to come, which is called the antitype; particularly, in theology, a person, thing, or event in the Old Testament regarded as foreshowing or betokening a corresponding reality of the new dispensation; a prophetic similitude: as, the paschal lamb is the type of Christ (who is the antitype).
• noun A characteristic embodiment; a definitive example or standard; an exemplar; a pattern; a model.
• noun A representative style, mode, or structure; a characteristic assemblage of particulars or qualities.
• noun In biology, specifically, a main division of the animal or vegetable kingdom; a sub-kingdom, branch, phylum, or province.
• noun A model or style that serves as a guide; a general plan or standard for the doing of anything; especially, in the arts, the plan, idea, or conception upon which anything is modeled or according to which any work is executed.
• noun A right-angled prism-shaped piece of metal or wood, having for its face a letter or character (usually in high relief), adapted for use in letterpress printing; collectively, the assemblage of the stamped characters used for printing; types inthe aggregate.
• noun In numismatics, the principal device or subject on the obverse and reverse of a coin or medal.
• noun In chem., a fundamental chemical compound which represents the structure of a large number of other and more complex compounds.
• noun In church hist., an edict of the emperor Constans II., issued in 648.
• noun In mathematics, a succession of symbols susceptible of + and—signs.
• noun upon the face of the generic diagnosis originally made, or
• noun upon the specific contents—that is, upon the species actually grouped under the generic name. Nearly all the older genera were made more comprehensive than modern genera are allowed to be, and have been restricted by reference of nearly all (often of all but one) of their usually numerous species to other genera; yet a generic name once established upon any species must always rest upon some (one or more) species; hence the occasion and the necessity for the determination of the type species in every such case. This has been done mainly in three ways.
• noun The first species given by an author in the list of the species of his genus is arbitrarily assumed to be his type species. But this is a mere convention, which often becomes an absurdity.
• noun The species which agrees best with the author's diagnosis of his genus is selected as the type species. This is reasonable, but it is at best a matter of opinion, and opinions differ enough to unsettle the whole system of nomenclature if each is to be allowed its own full weight.
• noun The most feasible and only safe procedure is to consider that species to be the type species which has as a matter of fact been left in the original genus from which the other species have been successively detached to form new genera; or, if there be more than one left, to choose the best-known, that being almost always the one which has oftenest borne the original generic name, and hence is most closely identified with it. For example: Let there be a Linnean genus Aba, with 3 species, A: oca, A. ada, and A, aga; let A. ada and A. aga have been detached as types respectively of two new genera; then A. aca remains as the type species of the original genus Aba, in its now restricted sense. This rule is applicable with force and precision to thousands of questionable cases; and its observance, together with insistence upon the fundamental law of priority, tends to the utmost attainable fixity of zoological and botanical nomenclature.
• noun Synonyms Image, shadow, adumbration, prophecy.
• noun 2 and Symbol, etc. See emblem.
• noun 4–6, Prototype, archetype, standard form.
• noun The four types first recognized and frequently referred to, namely, hydrochloric acid, water, ammonia, and marsh-gas, simply represent the first four degrees of valence, monad, dyad, triad, and tetrad.
• To use a type-writer.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• transitive verb rare To represent by a type, model, or symbol beforehand; to prefigure.
• transitive verb rare To furnish an expression or copy of; to represent; to typify.
• noun The mark or impression of something; stamp; impressed sign; emblem.
• noun Form or character impressed; style; semblance.