order

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A condition of logical or comprehensible arrangement among the separate elements of a group.
2. n. A condition of methodical or prescribed arrangement among component parts such that proper functioning or appearance is achieved: checked to see that the shipping department was in order.
3. n. Condition or state in general: The escalator is in good working order.
4. n. The established system of social organization: "Every revolution exaggerates the evils of the old order” ( C. Wright Mills).
5. n. A condition in which freedom from disorder or disruption is maintained through respect for established authority: finally restored order in the rebellious provinces.
6. n. A sequence or arrangement of successive things: changed the order of the files.
7. n. The prescribed form or customary procedure: the order of worship.
8. n. An authoritative indication to be obeyed; a command or direction.
9. n. A command given by a superior military officer requiring obedience, as in the execution of a task.
10. n. Formal written instructions to report for military duty at a specified time and place.
11. n. A commission or instruction to buy, sell, or supply something.
12. n. That which is supplied, bought, or sold.
13. n. A request made by a customer at a restaurant for a portion of food.
14. n. The food requested.
15. n. Law A direction or command delivered by a court or other adjudicative body and entered into the record but not necessarily included in the final judgment or verdict.
16. n. Ecclesiastical Any of several grades of the Christian ministry: the order of priesthood.
17. n. Ecclesiastical The rank of an ordained Christian minister or priest. Often used in the plural.
18. n. Ecclesiastical The sacrament or rite of ordination. Often used in the plural.
19. n. Any of the nine grades or choirs of angels.
20. n. A group of persons living under a religious rule: Order of Saint Benedict.
21. n. An organization of people united by a common fraternal bond or social aim.
22. n. A group of people upon whom a government or sovereign has formally conferred honor for unusual service or merit, entitling them to wear a special insignia: the Order of the Garter.
23. n. The insignia worn by such people.
24. n. A social class. Often used in the plural: the lower orders.
25. n. A class defined by the common attributes of its members; a kind.
26. n. Degree of quality or importance; rank: poetry of a high order.
27. n. Architecture Any of several styles of classical architecture characterized by the type of column and entablature employed. Of the five generally accepted classical orders, the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders are Greek and the Tuscan and Composite orders are Roman.
28. n. Architecture A style of building: a cathedral of the Gothic order.
29. n. Biology A taxonomic category of organisms ranking above a family and below a class. See Table at taxonomy.
30. n. Mathematics The sum of the exponents to which the variables in a term are raised; degree.
31. n. Mathematics An indicated number of successive differentiations to be performed.
32. n. Mathematics The number of elements in a finite group.
33. n. Mathematics The number of rows or columns in a determinant or matrix.
34. v. To issue a command or instruction to.
35. v. To give a command or instruction for: The judge ordered a recount of the ballots.
36. v. To direct to proceed as specified: ordered them off the property.
37. v. To give an order for; request to be supplied with.
38. v. To put into a methodical, systematic arrangement. See Synonyms at arrange.
39. v. To predestine; ordain.
40. v. To give an order or orders; request that something be done or supplied.
41. idiom. in order that So that.
42. idiom. in order to For the purpose of.
43. idiom. in short order With no delay; quickly.
44. idiom. on order Requested but not yet delivered.
45. idiom. on the order of Of a kind or fashion similar to; like: a house on the order of a mountain lodge.
46. idiom. on the order of Approximately; about: equipment costing on the order of a million dollars.
47. idiom. to order According to the buyer's specifications.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A row; rank; line.
2. n. A rank, grade, or class of a community or society: as, the higher or the lower orders of the community.
3. n. Specifically— The degree, rank, or status of clergymen.
4. n. One of the several degrees or grades of the clerical office. In the Roman Catholic Church these orders are bishop, priest (presbyter), deacon, subdeacon, acolyte, exorcist, reader, and doorkeeper. Originally the first three were accounted major orders and the others minor orders. Since the twelfth century the order of sub-deacon has been advanced to the rank of a major order, and the number of orders is generally counted as seven, the orders of bishop and presbyter being regarded as one order in so far as the sacerdotal character belongs to both. In the Orthodox Greek and other Oriental churches the major orders are those of bishop, priest, and deacon, and the minor orders are subdeacon, reader (anagnost), and sometimes singer (psaltes). The orders of bishop, priest, and deacon are known not only as major or holy orders, but as apostolic orders. The orders of subdeacon, acolyte, exorcist, and doorkeeper (ostiary) existed in the Western Church before the middle of the third cent ury; those of subdeacon, exorcist, reader, singer, and doorkeeper were as old as the third or fourth century in the Eastern Church. The Anglican Church retains only the orders of bishop, priest, and deacon. Major orders can be conferred by bishops only. Chorepiscopi, abbots, and priests have sometimes, however, been authorized to confer minor orders.
5. n. In the Roman Catholic, Greek, Anglican, and other episcopal churches, the sacrament or rite of ordination, by which ecclesiastics receive the power and grace for the discharge of their several functions: specifically termed holy order, or more commonly holy orders. The bishop alone can administer this rite. Orders as a sacrament or sacramental rite are limited to the major orders.
6. n. The consideration attaching to rank; honor; dignity; state.
7. n. In zoology, that taxonomic group which regularly comes next below the class and next above the family, consisting of one or more families, and forming a division (sometimes the whole) of a class. Like other classiflcatory groups, it has only an arbitrary or conventional taxonomic value. Compare superorder, suborder.
8. n. In botany, the most important unit of classification above the genus, corresponding somewhat closely to family in zoölogy. See family, 6. In phanerogams the term family is not technical or systematic, being sometimes applied to suborders, tribes, or even genera. In cryptogams it is made a subdivision of the order by some authors. See natural order, under natural.
9. n. A number of persons of the same profession, occupation, or pursuits, constituting a separate class in the community, or united by some special interest.
10. n. Specifically— A body or society of persons living by common consent under the same religious, moral, or social regulations; especially, a monastic society or fraternity: as, an order of monks or friars; the Benedictine or Franciscan order.
11. n. An institution, partly imitated from the medieval and crusading orders of military monks, but generally founded by a sovereign, a national legislature, or a prince of high rank, for the purpose of rewarding meritorious service by the conferring of a dignity. Most honorary orders consist of several classes, known as knights companions, officers, commanders, grand officers, and grand commanders, otherwise called grand cross or grand cordon. Many orders have fewer classes, a few having only one. It is customary to divide honorary orders into three ranks: Those which admit only nobles of the highest rank, and among foreigners only sovereign princes or members of reigning families; of this character are the Gulden Fleece (Austria and Spain), the Elephant (Denmark), and the Garter (Great Britain): it is usual to regard these three as the existing orders of highest dignity.
12. n. Those orders which are conferred upon members of noble families only, and sometimes because of the mere fact of noble birth, without special services.
13. n. The orders of merit, which are supposed to be conferred for services only. Of these the Legion of Honor is the best-known type. Two of the orders of merit may be regarded as somewhat exceptional — the first class of the Order of St. George of Russia and the Order of Maria Theresa of Austria. The former is conferred only upon a commanding general who has defeated an army of 50,000 men, or captured the enemy's capital, or brought about an honorable peace. There is now no person living who has gained this distinction regularly, though it has been given to a foreign sovereign. Other orders of merit approach these more or less nearly, as they are conferred with more or less care. The various orders have their appropriate insignia, consisting usually of a collar of design peculiar to the order, a star, cross, jewel, badge, ribbon, or the like. It is common to speak of an order by its name alone, as the Garter, the Bath. An order is said to be conferred or bestowed upon the recipient of its distinction; the recipient is said to be decorated with such an order; and the word order is often applied to the decoration or badge. See bath, garter, knighthood, star, thistle, etc.
14. n. A series or suite; a suit or change (as of apparel).
15. n. Regular sequence or succession; succession of acts or events; course or method of action or occurrence.
16. n. Regulated succession; formal disposition or array; methodical or harmonious arrangement; hence, fit or consistent collocation of parts.
17. n. In rhetoric, the placing of words and members in a sentence in such a manner as to contribute to force and beauty of expression, or to the clear illustration of the subject.
18. n. In classical arch., a column entire (including base, shaft, and capital), with a superincumbent entablature, viewed as forming an architectural whole or the characteristic element of a style. There are five orders — Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Tuscan, and Composite. (See these adjectives.) Every order consists of two essential parts, a column and an entablature; the column is normally divided into three parts — base, shaft, and capital; the entablature into three parts also — architrave, frieze, and cornice. The character of an order is displayed not only in its column, but in its general form and details, of which the column is, as it were, the regulator. The Tuscan and Composite are Roman orders, the other three are properly Greek, the Roman renderings of them being so different from the originals as to constitute in fact distinct orders. The Corinthian, though of purely Greek origin, did not come into extensive use before Roman authority was established throughout Greek lands.
19. n. In mathematics: In geometry, the degree of a geometrical form considered as a locus of points, or as determined by the degree of a locus of points. Newton introduced the term order as applied to plane curves. Cayley defines the order of a relation in m-dimensional space as follows: add to the conditions as many arbitrary linear conditions as are necessary to make the multiplicity of the relation equal to m; then the number of points satisfying these conditions is the order of the relation. Thus, the order of a plane curve is the number of points (real and imaginary) in which this curve is cut by an arbitrary right line. The order of a non-plane curve is the number of points in which the curve is cut by a plane. The order of a surface is the number of points in which the surface is cut by a right line. The order of a congruence is the number of points in which the congruence-lines lying in an arbitrary plane are cut by an arbitrary plane. The order of a complex is the number of points in which the curve enveloping the lines of the complex lying in an arbitrary plane is cut by an arbitrary plane.
20. n. In analysis, the number of elementary operations contained in a complex operation; also, that character of a quantity which corresponds to the degree of its algebraic expression. See the phrases below, and also equation.
21. n. Established rule, administration, system, or régime.
22. n. Prescribed law; regulation; rule; ordinance.
23. n. Authority; warrant.
24. n. Regular or customary mode of procedure; established usage; conformity to established rule or method of procedure; specifically, prescribed or customary mode of proceeding in debates or discussions, or in the conduct of deliberative or legislative bodies, public meetings, etc., or conformity with the same: as, the order of business; to rise to a point of order; the motion is not in order.
25. n. A proper state or condition; a normal, healthy, or efficient state.
26. n. Eccles., in liturgics, a stated form of divine service, or administration of a rite or ceremony, prescribed by ecclesiastical authority: as, the order of confirmation; also, the service so prescribed.
27. n. Conformity to law or established authority or usage; the desirable condition consequent upon such conformity; absence of revolt, turbulence, or confusion; public tranquillity: as, it is the duty of the government to uphold law and order.
28. n. Suitable action in view of some particular result or end; care; preparation; measures; steps: generally used in the obsolete phrase to take order.
29. n. Authoritative direction; injunction; mandate; command, whether oral or written; instruction: as, to receive orders to march; to disobey orders.
30. n. Specifically — In law, a direction of a court or judge, made or entered in writing, and not included in a judgment. A judgment is the formal determination of a trial; an order is usually the formal determination of a motion.
31. n. A written direction to pay money or deliver property: as, an order on a banker for twenty pounds; pay to A. B. or order; an order to a jeweler to return a necklace to bearer.
32. n. A direction to make, provide, or furnish anything; a commission to make purchases, supply goods, etc.: as, to give an agent an order for groceries; an order for canal stock; the work was done to order.
33. n. A free pass for admission to a theater or other place of entertainment.
34. n. See contact.
35. n. An order given by a customs collector for the storage of foreign merchandise which has not been delivered to the consignees within a certain time after its arrival in port.
36. n. In other churches, the Christian ministry, especially of the Anglican churches.
37. n. See merit.
38. n. An order founded by the duke Charles Eugene of Würtemberg in 1759.
39. n. That order in which the cause comes before the effect.
40. n. A Russian order founded in 1769 by the empress Catherine II. See def. 6 .
41. n. The prevailing rule or custom.
42. n. Not in an efficient condition: as, the watch is out of order.
43. n. In a meeting or legislative assembly, not in accordance with recognized or established rules: as, the motion is out of order.
44. n. Sick; unwell; indisposed.
45. To put in a row or rank; place in rank or position; range.
46. To place in the position or office of clergyman; confer clerical rank and authority upon; ordain.
47. To arrange methodically; dispose formally or fittingly; marshal; array; arrange suitably or harmoniously.
48. To dispose; adjust; regulate; direct; manage; govern; ordain; establish.
49. To instruct authoritatively or imperatively; give an order or command to; command; bid: as, the general ordered the troops to advance; to order a person out of the house.
50. To command to be made, done, issued, etc.; give a commission for; require to be supplied or furnished: as, to order goods through an agent.
51. To carry on.
52. To bid, require, instruct.
53. n. Specifically, in the tobacco-trade, same as case, 9.
54. n. In petrography, in the quantitative system of classification (see rock), a taxonomic division of igneous rocks which follows the class and is based on the proportions of the standard mineral subgroups within the preponderant salic or femic group on which the class is based.
55. n. In military tactics, the position of a rifle in a military drill after the command to order arms has been obeyed: as, to load from the order.

Wiktionary

1. n. uncountable Arrangement, disposition, sequence.
2. n. uncountable The state of being well arranged.
3. n. countable A command.
4. n. countable A request for some product or service.
5. n. countable A group of religious adherents, especially monks or nuns, set apart within their religion by adherence to a particular rule or set of principles; as, the Jesuit Order.
6. n. countable A society of knights; as, the Order of the Garter, the Order of the Bath.
7. n. countable A decoration, awarded by a government, a dynastic house, or a religious body to an individual, usually for distinguished service to a nation or to humanity.
8. n. countable, biology, taxonomy A rank in the classification of organisms, below class and above family; a taxon at that rank
9. n. cricket The sequence in which a side’s batsmen bat; the batting order.
10. n. electronics a power of polynomial function in an electronic circuit’s block, such as a filter, an amplifier, etc.
11. n. chemistry The overall power of the rate law of a chemical reaction, expressed as a polynomial function of concentrations of reactants and products.
12. n. mathematics The cardinality, or number of elements in a set or related structure.
13. n. graph theory The number of vertices in a graph
14. n. order theory A partially ordered set.
15. n. order theory The relation on a partially ordered set that determines that it in fact a partically ordered set.
16. n. mathematics The sum of the exponents on the variables in a monomial, or the highest such among all monomials in a polynomial.
17. v. To set in some sort of order.
18. v. To arrange, set in proper order.
19. v. To issue a command.
20. v. To request some product or service.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. Regular arrangement; any methodical or established succession or harmonious relation; method; system.
2. n. Of material things, like the books in a library.
3. n. Of intellectual notions or ideas, like the topics of a discource.
4. n. Of periods of time or occurrences, and the like.
5. n. Right arrangement; a normal, correct, or fit condition
6. n. The customary mode of procedure; established system, as in the conduct of debates or the transaction of business; usage; custom; fashion.
7. n. Conformity with law or decorum; freedom from disturbance; general tranquillity; public quiet.
8. n. That which prescribes a method of procedure; a rule or regulation made by competent authority.
9. n. A command; a mandate; a precept; a direction.
10. n. Hence: A commission to purchase, sell, or supply goods; a direction, in writing, to pay money, to furnish supplies, to admit to a building, a place of entertainment, or the like.
11. n. A number of things or persons arranged in a fixed or suitable place, or relative position; a rank; a row; a grade; especially, a rank or class in society; a group or division of men in the same social or other position; also, a distinct character, kind, or sort
12. n. A body of persons having some common honorary distinction or rule of obligation; esp., a body of religious persons or aggregate of convents living under a common rule
13. n. An ecclesiastical grade or rank, as of deacon, priest, or bishop; the office of the Christian ministry; -- often used in the plural.
14. n. (Arch.) The disposition of a column and its component parts, and of the entablature resting upon it, in classical architecture; hence (as the column and entablature are the characteristic features of classical architecture) a style or manner of architectural designing.
15. n. (Nat. Hist.) An assemblage of genera having certain important characters in common.
16. n. (Rhet.) The placing of words and members in a sentence in such a manner as to contribute to force and beauty or clearness of expression.
17. n. (Math.) Rank; degree.
18. v. To put in order; to reduce to a methodical arrangement; to arrange in a series, or with reference to an end. Hence, to regulate; to dispose; to direct; to rule.
19. v. To give an order to; to command.
20. v. To give an order for; to secure by an order
21. v. (Eccl.) To admit to holy orders; to ordain; to receive into the ranks of the ministry.
22. v. To give orders; to issue commands.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. give instructions to or direct somebody to do something with authority
2. n. established customary state (especially of society)
3. v. assign a rank or rating to
4. n. a commercial document used to request someone to supply something in return for payment and providing specifications and quantities
5. n. (architecture) one of original three styles of Greek architecture distinguished by the type of column and entablature used or a style developed from the original three by the Romans
6. v. arrange thoughts, ideas, temporal events
7. n. (usually plural) the status or rank or office of a Christian clergyman in an ecclesiastical hierarchy
8. n. a request for something to be made, supplied, or served
9. v. issue commands or orders for
10. v. bring into conformity with rules or principles or usage; impose regulations
11. v. bring order to or into
12. n. (often plural) a command given by a superior (e.g., a military or law enforcement officer) that must be obeyed
13. n. the act of putting things in a sequential arrangement
14. n. a body of rules followed by an assembly
15. n. a condition of regular or proper arrangement
16. n. a legally binding command or decision entered on the court record (as if issued by a court or judge)
17. n. a group of person living under a religious rule
18. n. logical or comprehensible arrangement of separate elements
19. v. appoint to a clerical posts
20. v. place in a certain order
21. n. a degree in a continuum of size or quantity
22. n. (biology) taxonomic group containing one or more families
23. n. a formal association of people with similar interests
24. v. make a request for something