Hierarchy

Hi´er`arch`y Pronunciation: hī´ẽr`ärk`ŷ

n.	1.	Dominion or authority in sacred things.
	2.	A body of officials disposed organically in ranks and orders each subordinate to the one above it; a body of ecclesiastical rulers.
	3.	A form of government administered in the church by patriarchs, metropolitans, archbishops, bishops, and, in an inferior degree, by priests.
	4.	A rank or order of holy beings. Standards and gonfalons . . . for distinction serve Of hierarchies, of orders, and degrees. - Milton.
	5.	(Math., Logic, Computers) Any group of objects ranked so that every one but the topmost is subordinate to a specified one above it; also, the entire set of ordering relations between such objects. The ordering relation between each object and the one above is called a hierarchical relation.

Noun	1.	hierarchy - a series of ordered groupings of people or things within a system; "put honesty first in her hierarchy of values"
	2.	hierarchy - the organization of people at different ranks in an administrative body Synonyms: pecking order, power structure

HIERARCHY, eccl. law. A hierarchy signified, originally, power of the priest; for in the beginning of societies, the priests were entrusted with all the power but, among the priests themselves, there were different degrees of power and authority, at the summit of which was the sovereign pontiff, and this was called the hierarchy. Now it signifies, not so much the power of the priests as the border of power.

hierarchy - An organisation with few things, or one thing, at the top and with several things below each other thing. An inverted tree structure. Examples in computing include a directory hierarchy where each directory may contain files or other directories; a hierarchical network (see hierarchical routing), a class hierarchy in object-oriented programming.

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