ORDAIN • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Ordain

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/ɔrdˈeɪn/ Listen

Ordain

verb

(past & past part. ordained; pres. part. ordaining)

Order by virtue of superior authority; decree. Synonym: enact. "The legislature enacted this law in 1985"

Appoint to a clerical posts. Synonyms: consecrate, order, ordinate.

Invest with ministerial or priestly authority.

Issue an order.

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Etymology of 'Ordain'

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"Ordain" Quotes from Famous Books

... of this office, it was the right and duty of the queen to choose a religion for the country; to ordain its rites and ceremonies, discipline, and form of church government; and to fix the rank, offices and emoluments of its ministers. She was also to exercise this power entirely at her own discretion, free from the control of parliament or the interference of the clerical body, ...

— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... ordain that one animal should not live by the death of another? Nature, being inconstant and taking pleasure in creating and making constantly new lives and forms, because she knows that her terrestrial materials become thereby augmented, ...

— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... Thus I've ordain'd it. In the jess'mine bow'r, The place which she dishonour'd with her guilt, There will I meet her; the appointment's made; And calmly spread (for I can do it now) The blackness of her crime before her sight; And ...

— The Revenge - A Tragedy • Edward Young

... why was man [Endnote A] so eminently raised Amid the vast Creation; why ordain'd Through life and death to dart his piercing eye, With thoughts beyond the limit of his frame; But that the Omnipotent might send him forth In sight of mortal and immortal powers, As on a boundless theatre, to run The great career of justice; to exalt His generous aim to all diviner deeds; To chase ...

— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... we must not so much betray ourselves to discourtship, as to suffer you to be longer unsaluted: please you to use the state ordain'd for the opponent; in which nature, without envy, ...

— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

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