- (often plural) a command given by a superior (e.g., a military or law enforcement officer) that must be obeyed;
"the British ships dropped anchor and waited for orders from London"
- a degree in a continuum of size or quantity;
"it was on the order of a mile"
"an explosion of a low order of magnitude"
- established customary state (especially of society);
"order ruled in the streets"
"law and order"
- logical or comprehensible arrangement of separate elements;
"we shall consider these questions in the inverse order of their presentation"
- a condition of regular or proper arrangement;
"he put his desk in order"
"the machine is now in working order"
- a legally binding command or decision entered on the court record (as if issued by a court or judge);
"a friend in New Mexico said that the order caused no trouble out there"
- a commercial document used to request someone to supply something in return for payment and providing specifications and quantities;
"IBM received an order for a hundred computers"
- a formal association of people with similar interests;
"he joined a golf club"
"they formed a small lunch society"
"men from the fraternal order will staff the soup kitchen today"
- a body of rules followed by an assembly
- (usually plural) the status or rank or office of a Christian clergyman in an ecclesiastical hierarchy;
"theologians still disagree over whether `bishop' should or should not be a separate Order"
- a group of person living under a religious rule;
"the order of Saint Benedict"
- (biology) taxonomic group containing one or more families
- a request for something to be made, supplied, or served;
"I gave the waiter my order"
"the company's products were in such demand that they got more orders than their call center could handle"
- (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
- the act of putting things in a sequential arrangement;
"there were mistakes in the ordering of items on the list"
