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hierarchy.

A body of authoritative officials organized in nested ranks.

9 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈhaɪ.ə.ɹɑː(ɹ).ki//ˈhaɪ.ɹɑː(ɹ).ki//ˈhaɪ.ɑː(ɹ).ki/nonstandard
  1. A body of authoritative officials organized in nested ranks.

  2. 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.

  3. Any group of objects ranked so that every one but the topmost is subordinate to a specified one above it.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English ierarchie, jerarchie, from Old French ierarchie, jerarchie, from Late Latin ierarchia, from Latin hierarchia, from Ancient Greek ἱεραρχία (hierarkhía, “rule of a high priest”), from ἱεράρχης (hierárkhēs, “high priest”), from ἱερός (hierós, “holy”) + ἄρχω (árkhō, “to rule”), equivalent to hiero- + -archy. The H was re-added c. 1500 due to influence from Classical Latin.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.