hierarchy
A body of authoritative officials organized in nested ranks.
Other meanings
A social, religious, economic or political system or organization in which people or groups of people are ranked with some superior to others based on their status, authority or some other trait.
Any group of objects ranked so that every one but the topmost is subordinate to a specified one above it.
Related words
- antihierarchy
- arithmetical hierarchy
- arithmetic hierarchy
- Chomsky hierarchy
- hierarchial
- hierarchism
- hierarchy of effects
- Kleene hierarchy
- Kleene-Mostowski hierarchy
- phonological hierarchy
- polyhierarchy
- subhierarchy
Example sentences
Word history
From Ancient Greek "ἱεραρχία" (rule of a high priest).
Where this comes from
This definition is adapted from “hierarchy” on Wiktionary, by its contributors; example sentences are from Tatoeba, credited to their authors above, published under CC BY-SA 4.0. This page is published under the same licence.