English dictionary · noun

hierarchy

A body of authoritative officials organized in nested ranks.

Meaning and definitions

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.

Connected roots

• -archy

  rule, leader

Explore the word family

These words share a recorded root connection. A shared root is a learning clue; it does not establish every step in a word’s history.

• archbishop

  A senior bishop who is in charge of an archdiocese, and presides over a group of dioceses called a province (in Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, etc.)

• monarchy

  a form of government with a monarch at the head

• anarchy

  The state of a society being without authorities or an authoritative governing body.

• patriarch

  The highest form of bishop, in the ancient world having authority over other bishops in the province but now generally as an honorary title; in Roman Catholicism, considered a bishop second only to the Pope in rank.

• aristocracy

  the highest class in society; government by a privileged class

• patriarchy

  A social system in which the father is head of the household, having authority over women and children, and in which lineage is traced through the male line.

• archdiocese

  A diocese administered by an archbishop.

• archangel

  A powerful angel that leads many other angels, but is still loyal to a deity, and often seen as belonging to a particular archangelical rank or order within a greater hierarchy of angels. (Judeo-Christian examples: Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Uriel).

• oligarchy

  A government run by and for only a few, often the aristocracy, the wealthy, or their friends and associates.

• archduke

  The son or male-line grandson of an emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

• matriarch

  A female leader of a family, a tribe or an ethnic or religious group.

• matriarchy

  A social system in which the mother is head of household, having authority over men and children, and lineage is traced through the female line.

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