HIERARCHY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Hierarchy

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/hˈaɪərˌɑrki/ /hˈaɪrˌɑrki/ Listen

noun

Hierarchy n. (pl. hierarchies)

Dominion or authority in sacred things.

A body of officials disposed organically in ranks and orders each subordinate to the one above it; a body of ecclesiastical rulers.

A form of government administered in the church by patriarchs, metropolitans, archbishops, bishops, and, in an inferior degree, by priests.

A rank or order of holy beings. "Standards and gonfalons... for distinction serve Of hierarchies, of orders, and degrees."

(Math., Logic, Computers) Any group of objects ranked so that every one but the topmost is subordinate to a specified one above it; also, the entire set of ordering relations between such objects. The ordering relation between each object and the one above is called a hierarchical relation. Note: Classification schemes, as in biology, usually form hierarchies.

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Etymology of 'Hierarchy'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Hierarchy" Quotes from Famous Books

... the physician and sculptor belong the architect, the teacher, and the chemist. Men of these professions pursued the artes liberales, as the Romans put it, and constituted an aristocracy among those engaged in the trades or lower professions. Below them in the hierarchy came those who gained a livelihood by the artes ludicrae, like the actor, professional dancer, juggler, or gladiator, and in the lowest caste were the carpenters, weavers, and other artisans whose occupations were artes vulgares ...

— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott

... head of government: Secretary of the General People's Committee (Prime Minister) al-Baghdadi Ali al-MAHMUDI (since 5 March 2006) cabinet: General People's Committee established by the General People's Congress elections: national elections are indirect through a hierarchy of people's committees; head of government elected by the General People's Congress; election last held March 2006 (next to be held ...

— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... opposition to the corruptions of the court of Rome. Pope Innocent IV, who filled the papal chair upwards of eleven years, from 1243 to 1254, appears to have exceeded all his predecessors in the shamelessness of his abuses. We are told, that the hierarchy of the church of England was overwhelmed like a flood with an inundation of foreign dignitaries, of whom not a few were mere boys, for the most part without learning, ignorant of the language of the island, and incapable of benefiting the people nominally ...

— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... of Lower Canada was absurdly feeble. The greatest power in all Canada—the Church—shrank in horror from the blood-stained banner of regicide France; and zealous always for the monarchy, the Catholic hierarchy indignantly spurned the overtures of a republic whose most cherished principle was atheism—which had abandoned the worship of God for the cult of Reason. "For God and the King" had been the priestly motto ...

— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... with those of Voltaire and the Encyclopedists. Formerly, Religion was wont to be ascribed to priestcraft; it was supposed to have been invented by fraud, supported by falsehood, and professed in hypocrisy; and the Church, but especially the hierarchy of Rome, was the object of incessant ridicule or malignant abuse. But now, Religion is discovered to be the natural, necessary, and salutary result of the legitimate action of the human faculties in the earlier stages of their development, the initial impellent of social progress, the indispensable ...

— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

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