- any system of persons or things ranked one above another.
- government by ecclesiastical rulers.
- the power or dominion of a hierarch.
- an organized body of ecclesiastical officials in successive ranks or orders: the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
- one of the three divisions of the angels, each made up of three orders, conceived as constituting a graded body.
- the collective body of angels.
- government by an elite group.
- the system of levels according to which a language is organized, as phonemic, morphemic, syntactic, or semantic.
- a system of persons or things arranged in a graded order
- a body of persons in holy orders organized into graded ranks
- the collective body of those so organized
- a series of ordered groupings within a system, such as the arrangement of plants and animals into classes, orders, families, etc
- a formal structure, usually represented by a diagram of connected nodes, with a single uppermost element
- government by an organized priesthood
