order

• ordre (obsolete)

From Middle English ordre, from Old French ordre, ordne, ordene (“order, rank”), from Latin ōrdinem, accusative of ōrdō (“row, rank, regular arrangement”, literally “row of threads in a loom”), from Proto-Italic *ordō (“to arrange”), probably ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂or-d-, from *h₂er-.

Related to Latin ōrdior (“begin”, literally “begin to weave”). In sense “request for purchase”, compare bespoke. Doublet of ordo.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈɔːdə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɔɹdɚ/, [ˈɔɹɾɚ]

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• (Indian English) IPA^(key): /ˈɔːdə(r)/
• Hyphenation: or‧der
• Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)də(ɹ)

order (countable and uncountable, plural orders)

Illustrations of the Classical orders (from left to right): Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite, made in 1728 (sense 14)

1. (countable) Arrangement, disposition, or sequence.

   put the children in age order

   It's arranged in order of frequency

2. (countable) A position in an arrangement, disposition, or sequence.
   • 1843, New York (State). Natural History Survey, Geology of New-York: Comprising the survey of the fourth geological ...‎:

     In these situations we find the Genesee slate, the Tully limestone and the upper part of the Hamilton group, each one in its order disappearing beneath the lake level as we proceed southward.

   • 1856, George Nicholls, A History of the Irish Poor Law: In Connexion with the Condition of the People‎:

     In the latter portion of this period, the country was assailed by famine and pestilence - — a fearful visitation which will be noticed hereafter in its order of date, and of which it would be out of place to say more at present.

   • 1897, T. L. Heath (translator), Eutocius of Ascalon, Extract from a commentary by Eutocius, quoted in 1897 [CUP], T. L. Heath (editor), The Works of Archimedes, 2002, Dover, unnumbered page,

     His attempt I shall also give in its order.

   • 1915, Edwin Abbott Abbott, the fourfold gospel the proclamation of the new kingdom‎, page 298:

     This narrative must be discussed later on, in its order.

   • 1996, John Clare, Eric Robinson, David Powell, John Clare: Poems of the Middle Period, 1822-1837‎, page xxxi:

     The latter comes into play only as we examine each word in its order in the line.

   • 2013, Leah Sarat, Fire in the Canyon: Religion, Migration, and the Mexican Dream‎:

     Hasn't it been shown that the Hebrew letter “w” is equivalent to the number 6, due to its order in the alphabet, he asked?

   • 2014, Julia Navarro, Tell Me Who I Am‎:

     Because Professor Soler told me that you had to investigate things step by step, that you had to find a thread to follow and follow it, and find everything out in its order.

3. (uncountable) The state of being well arranged.

   The house is in order; the machinery is out of order.

4. (countable) Conformity with law or decorum; freedom from disturbance; general tranquillity; public quiet.

   to preserve order in a community or an assembly

   Order in the court!

5. (countable) A command.

   give an order

   his inability to follow orders

   • 1907, Harold Bindloss, chapter 30, in The Dust of Conflict‎:

     It was by his order the shattered leading company flung itself into the houses when the Sin Verguenza were met by an enfilading volley as they reeled into the calle.

   • 1950 January, David L. Smith, “A Runaway at Beattock”, in Railway Magazine, page 53:

     John Hedley was Locomotive Foreman at Beattock. He was in bed, but they roused him, and he gave orders for one of his pilot engines to go up to the summit, get Mitchell's train, and take it to Carlisle.

6. (countable) A request for some product or service; a commission to purchase, sell, or supply goods.

   make an order

   receive an online order for the new range of sunglasses

   • 2012 December 1, “An internet of airborne things”, in The Economist‎, volume 405, number 8813, page 3 (Technology Quarterly):

     A farmer could place an order for a new tractor part by text message and pay for it by mobile money-transfer.

7. (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.

   St. Ignatius Loyola founded the Jesuit order in 1537.

8. (countable) An association of knights.

   the Order of the Garter, the Order of the Bath.

9. Any group of people with common interests.
10. (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.
    • 2022 August 3, Matthew Mazzetta, “President Tsai awards state honor to visiting U.S. House speaker”, in Focus Taiwan‎, archived from the original on 03 August 2022:

      The Order of Propitious Clouds is a civilian order that can be awarded to Taiwan citizens or foreign nationals. It is divided into a total of nine "classes" or grades, of which the Special Grand Cordon is the highest.
      Pelosi said she was particularly honored to receive the award from Tsai -- "a woman president in one of the freest societies in the world."

11. (countable, biology, taxonomy) A category in the classification of organisms, ranking below class and above family; a taxon at that rank.
    • 2013 May-June, Katie L. Burke, “In the News”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, page 193:

      Bats host many high-profile viruses that can infect humans, including severe acute respiratory syndrome and Ebola. A recent study explored the ecological variables that may contribute to bats’ propensity to harbor such zoonotic diseases by comparing them with another order of common reservoir hosts: rodents.

    The magnolia and nutmeg families belong to the order Magnoliales.

12. 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 distinct character, kind, or sort.

    the higher or lower orders of society

    talent of a high order

    • 1651, Jer[emy] Taylor, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living. […], 2nd edition, London: […] Francis Ashe […], →OCLC:

      They are in equal order to their several ends.

    • 1726, George Granville, The British Enchanters:

      Various orders various ensigns bear.

    • 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC:

      […] which, to his order of mind, must have seemed little short of crime.

13. (Christianity) An ecclesiastical rank or position, usually for the sake of ministry, (especially, when plural) holy orders.

    There have been many major and minor orders in the history of Christianity: the order of virgins, of deacons, priests, lectors, acolytes, porters, catechists, widows, etc.

    to take orders or holy orders means to be ordained a deacon or priest

14. (architecture) The disposition of a column and its component parts, and of the entablature resting upon it, in classical architecture; hence (since the column and entablature are the characteristic features of classical architecture) a style or manner of architectural design.
15. (cricket) The sequence in which a side’s batsmen bat; the batting order.
16. (electronics) A power of polynomial function in an electronic circuit’s block, such as a filter, an amplifier, etc.

    a 3-stage cascade of a 2nd-order bandpass Butterworth filter

17. (chemistry) The overall power of the rate law of a chemical reaction, expressed as a polynomial function of concentrations of reactants and products.
18. (set theory) The cardinality, or number of elements in a set, group, or other structure regardable as a set.
    • 1911 [Cambridge University Press], William Burnside, Theory of Groups of Finite Order, 2nd Edition, Reprint, Dover (Dover Phoenix), 2004, page 222,

      In this case, the conjugate set contains n(n − 1)/x(x − 1) distinct sub-groups of order m, and H is therefore self-conjugate in a group K of order x(x − l)m.

    • 2000, Michael Aschbacher, Finite Group Theory, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, page 260:

      For various reasons it turns out to be better to enlarge this set of invariants to include suitable normalizers of subgroups of odd prime order.

19. (group theory, of an element of a group) For given group G and element g ∈ G, the smallest positive natural number n, if it exists, such that (using multiplicative notation), gⁿ = e, where e is the identity element of G; if no such number exists, the element is said to be of infinite order (or sometimes zero order).
    • 1997, Frank Celler, C. R. Leedham-Green, “Calculating the Order of an Invertible Matrix”, in Larry Finkelstein, William M. Kantor, editors, Groups and Computation II, American Mathematical Society, page 55:

      The object of this note is to observe that it is possible to calculate the order of an element ${\displaystyle A}$ of ${\displaystyle G={\mathit {GL}}(d,q)}$ on average using ${\displaystyle O(d^{3}{\mathsf {log}}\ q)}$ field operations, assuming that ${\displaystyle q^{i}-1}$ has been factorised for ${\displaystyle i\leq d}$.

    • 1999, A. Ehrenfeucht, T. Harju, G. Rozenberg, The Theory of 2-structures, World Scientific, page 15,

      If ${\displaystyle \Delta }$ is a finite group, its cardinality is called the order of ${\displaystyle \Delta }$. The order of an element ${\displaystyle a\in \Delta }$ is defined as the smallest nonnegative integer ${\displaystyle n}$ such that ${\displaystyle a^{n}=1_{\Delta }}$. The second case of the following result is known as Cauchy's theorem.

      Theorem 1.10 Let ${\displaystyle \Delta }$ be a finite group.

      (i) The order of an element ${\displaystyle a\in \Delta }$ divides the order ${\displaystyle |\Delta |}$ of the group.

      (ii) If a prime number ${\displaystyle p}$ divides ${\displaystyle |\Delta |}$, then there exists an element ${\displaystyle a\in \Delta }$ of order ${\displaystyle p}$.

    • 2010, A. R. Vasishta, A. K. Vasishta, Modern Algebra, Krishna Prakashan Media, 60th Edition, page 180,

      Since in a finite group the order of an element must be a divisor of the order of the group, therefore o (a) cannot be 3 and so we must have o (a)=4=the order of the group G.

20. (graph theory) The number of vertices in a graph.
21. (order theory) A partially ordered set.
22. (order theory) The relation on a partially ordered set that determines that it is, in fact, a partially ordered set.
23. (algebra) The sum of the exponents on the variables in a monomial, or the highest such among all monomials in a polynomial.

    A quadratic polynomial, ${\displaystyle ax^{2}+bx+c,}$ is said to be of order (or degree) 2.

24. (finance) A written direction to furnish someone with money or property; compare money order, postal order.
    • 1763, James Boswell, edited by Gordon Turnbull, London Journal 1762-1763, Penguin, published 2014, page 233:

      I then walked to Cochrane's & got an order on Sir Charles Asgill for my money.

• 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Luke 1:i:

  Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us […] .

• 1973, Donald Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 3: Sorting and Searching, Addison-Wesley, chapter 8:

  Since only two of our tape drives were in working order, I was ordered to order more tape units in short order, in order to order the data several orders of magnitude faster.

• (taxonomy): ordo
• (group): association, brotherhood, league, sisterhood, society
• (algebra): degree

• chaos, disorder

• denomination

• → Swahili: oda

• Appendix:Glossary of order theory

• order on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Order (group theory) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Cauchy's theorem (group theory) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Lagrange's theorem (group theory) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• (taxonomy): Taxonomic rank on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• order on Wikiquote.Wikiquote

order (third-person singular simple present orders, present participle ordering, simple past and past participle ordered)

1. (transitive) To set in some sort of order.

   We need to order them alphabetically.

2. (transitive) To arrange, set in proper order.

   The books in the shelf need ordering.

3. (transitive) To issue a command to.

   to order troops to advance

   He ordered me to leave.

   I hate being ordered around by my co-workers.

4. (transitive) To request some product or service; to secure by placing an order.

   You can now order most products to be delivered to your home.

   to order groceries

   to order food from a restaurant

5. To admit to holy orders; to ordain; to receive into the ranks of the ministry.
   • 1549 March 7, Thomas Cranmer [et al.], compilers, The Booke of the Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacramentes, […], London: […] Edowardi Whitchurche […], →OCLC:

     persons presented to be ordered deacons

• (arrange into some sort of order): sort, rank
• (issue a command): command

• ordain
• orderly
• ordinal
• ordinary