1. a number of persons forming a separate class in a social hierarchy or in any graded body.
2. a social or official position or standing, as in the armed forces: the rank of captain.
3. high position or station in the social or some similar scale: a woman of rank.
4. a class in any scale of comparison.
5. relative position or standing: a writer of the first rank.
6. a row, line, or series of things or persons: orchestra players arranged in ranks.
7. ranks,
• the members of an armed service apart from its officers; enlisted personnel.
• military enlisted personnel as a group.
8. the general body of any party, society, or organization apart from the officers or leaders.
9. orderly arrangement; array.
10. a line of persons, especially soldiers, standing abreast in close-order formation (distinguished from file).
11. a place or station occupied by vehicles available for hire; stand: a taxi rank.
12. one of the horizontal lines of squares on a chessboard or checkerboard.
13. a set of organ pipes of the same kind and tonal color.
14. the order of the nonzero determinant of greatest order that can be selected from a given matrix by the elimination of rows and columns.
15. the classification of coal according to hardness, from lignite to anthracite.

16. to arrange in ranks or in regular formation: The men were ranked according to height. He ranked the chess pieces on the board.
17. to assign to a particular position, station, class, etc.: She was ranked among the most admired citizens.
18. to outrank: The colonel ranks all other officers in the squadron.
19. to insult; criticize.

20. to form a rank or ranks.
21. to take up or occupy a place in a particular rank, class, etc.: to rank well ahead of the other students.
22. to have rank or standing.
23. to be the senior in rank: The colonel ranks at this camp.
24. to complain.

25. break ranks,
• to leave an assigned position in a military formation.
• to disagree with, defect from, or refuse to support one's colleagues, party, or the like.
26. to make use of one's superior rank to gain an advantage over (someone).

1. growing with excessive luxuriance; vigorous and tall of growth: tall rank weeds.
2. producing an excessive and coarse growth, as land.
3. having an offensively strong smell or taste: a rank cigar.
4. offensively strong, as a smell or taste.
5. utter; absolute: a rank amateur; rank treachery.
6. highly offensive; disgusting: a rank sight of carnage.
7. grossly coarse, vulgar, or indecent: rank language.
8. inferior; contemptible.

1. Austrian psychoanalyst.

1. a position, esp an official one, within a social organization, esp the armed forces
2. high social or other standing; status
3. a line or row of people or things
4. the position of an item in any ordering or sequence
5. a place where taxis wait to be hired
6. a line of soldiers drawn up abreast of each other
7. any of the eight horizontal rows of squares on a chessboard
8. (in systemic grammar) one of the units of description of which a grammar is composed. Ranks of English grammar are sentence, clause, group, word, and morpheme
9. a set of organ pipes controlled by the same stop
10. (of a matrix) the largest number of linearly independent rows or columns; the number of rows (or columns) of the nonzero determinant of greatest order that can be extracted from the matrix
11. to fall out of line, esp when under attack
12. to maintain discipline or solidarity, esp in anticipation of attack
13. to get one's own way by virtue of one's superior position or rank

14. to arrange (people or things) in rows or lines; range
15. to accord or be accorded a specific position in an organization, society, or group
16. to array (a set of objects) as a sequence, esp in terms of the natural arithmetic ordering of some measure of the elements
17. to be important; rate
18. to take precedence or surpass in rank

1. showing vigorous and profuse growth
2. highly offensive or disagreeable, esp in smell or taste
3. complete or absolute; utter
4. coarse or vulgar; gross

1. J (oseph) Arthur, 1st Baron. 1888–1972, British industrialist and film executive, whose companies dominated the British film industry in the 1940s and 1950s
2. Otto (ˈɔto). 1884–1939, Austrian psychoanalyst, noted for his theory that the trauma of birth may be reflected in certain forms of mental illness

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