hierarchy

hierarchy is defined in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913) with 3 senses. The full text of each entry is reproduced verbatim below.

Definitions

  1. 1.A body of officials disposed organically in ranks and orders each subordinate to the one above it; a body of ecclesiastical rulers.
  2. 2.A form of government administered in the church by patriarchs, metropolitans, archbishops, bishops, and, in an inferior degree, by priests. Shipley.
  3. 3.A rank or order of holy beings. Standards and gonfalons . . . for distinction serve Of hierarchies, of orders, and degrees. Milton.

Source: Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 edition (public domain, via GCIDE / Project Gutenberg).

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