The Collaborative International Dictionary
Order \Or"der\, n. [OE. ordre, F. ordre, fr. L. ordo, ordinis. Cf. Ordain, Ordinal.]
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Regular arrangement; any methodical or established succession or harmonious relation; method; system; as:
Of material things, like the books in a library.
Of intellectual notions or ideas, like the topics of a discource.
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Of periods of time or occurrences, and the like.
The side chambers were . . . thirty in order.
--Ezek. xli. 6.Bright-harnessed angels sit in order serviceable.
--Milton.Good order is the foundation of all good things.
--Burke.
Right arrangement; a normal, correct, or fit condition; as, the house is in order; the machinery is out of order.
--Locke.-
The customary mode of procedure; established system, as in the conduct of debates or the transaction of business; usage; custom; fashion.
--Dantiel.And, pregnant with his grander thought, Brought the old order into doubt.
--Emerson. Conformity with law or decorum; freedom from disturbance; general tranquillity; public quiet; as, to preserve order in a community or an assembly.
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That which prescribes a method of procedure; a rule or regulation made by competent authority; as, the rules and orders of the senate.
The church hath authority to establish that for an order at one time which at another time it may abolish.
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A command; a mandate; a precept; a direction.
Upon this new fright, an order was made by both houses for disarming all the papists in England.
--Clarendon. -
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; as, orders for blankets are large.
In those days were pit orders -- beshrew the uncomfortable manager who abolished them.
--Lamb. -
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; as, the higher or lower orders of society; talent of a high order.
They are in equal order to their several ends.
--Jer. Taylor.Various orders various ensigns bear.
--Granville.Which, to his order of mind, must have seemed little short of crime.
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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; as, the Order of the Bath; the Franciscan order.
Find a barefoot brother out, One of our order, to associate me.
--Shak.The venerable order of the Knights Templars.
--Sir W. Scott. An ecclesiastical grade or rank, as of deacon, priest, or bishop; the office of the Christian ministry; -- often used in the plural; as, to take orders, or to take holy orders, that is, to enter some grade of the ministry.
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(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.
Note: The Greeks used three different orders, easy to distinguish, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. The Romans added the Tuscan, and changed the Doric so that it is hardly recognizable, and also used a modified Corinthian called Composite. The Renaissance writers on architecture recognized five orders as orthodox or classical, -- Doric (the Roman sort), Ionic, Tuscan, Corinthian, and Composite. See Illust. of Capital.
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(Nat. Hist.) An assemblage of genera having certain important characters in common; as, the Carnivora and Insectivora are orders of Mammalia.
Note: The Linn[ae]an artificial orders of plants rested mainly on identity in the numer of pistils, or agreement in some one character. Natural orders are groups of genera agreeing in the fundamental plan of their flowers and fruit. A natural order is usually (in botany) equivalent to a family, and may include several tribes.
(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.
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(Math.) Rank; degree; thus, the order of a curve or surface is the same as the degree of its equation. Artificial order or Artificial system. See Artificial classification, under Artificial, and Note to def. 12 above. Close order (Mil.), the arrangement of the ranks with a distance of about half a pace between them; with a distance of about three yards the ranks are in open order. The four Orders, The Orders four, the four orders of mendicant friars. See Friar. --Chaucer. General orders (Mil.), orders issued which concern the whole command, or the troops generally, in distinction from special orders. Holy orders.
(Eccl.) The different grades of the Christian ministry; ordination to the ministry. See def. 10 above.
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(R. C. Ch.) A sacrament for the purpose of conferring a special grace on those ordained. In order to, for the purpose of; to the end; as means to. The best knowledge is that which is of greatest use in order to our eternal happiness. --Tillotson. Minor orders (R. C. Ch.), orders beneath the diaconate in sacramental dignity, as acolyte, exorcist, reader, doorkeeper. Money order. See under Money. Natural order. (Bot.) See def. 12, Note. Order book.
A merchant's book in which orders are entered.
(Mil.) A book kept at headquarters, in which all orders are recorded for the information of officers and men.
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A book in the House of Commons in which proposed orders must be entered. [Eng.] Order in Council, a royal order issued with and by the advice of the Privy Council. [Great Britain] Order of battle (Mil.), the particular disposition given to the troops of an army on the field of battle. Order of the day, in legislative bodies, the special business appointed for a specified day. Order of a differential equation (Math.), the greatest index of differentiation in the equation. Sailing orders (Naut.), the final instructions given to the commander of a ship of war before a cruise. Sealed orders, orders sealed, and not to be opened until a certain time, or arrival at a certain place, as after a ship is at sea. Standing order.
A continuing regulation for the conduct of parliamentary business.
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(Mil.) An order not subject to change by an officer temporarily in command.
To give order, to give command or directions.
--Shak.To take order for, to take charge of; to make arrangements concerning.
Whiles I take order for mine own affairs.
--Shak.Syn: Arrangement; management. See Direction.
minor \mi"nor\ (m[imac]"n[~e]r), a. [L., a comparative with no positive; akin to AS. min small, G. minder less, OHG. minniro, a., min, adv., Icel. minni, a., minnr, adv., Goth. minniza, a., mins, adv., Ir. & Gael. min small, tender, L. minuere to lessen, Gr. miny`qein, Skr. mi to damage. Cf. Minish, Minister, Minus, Minute.]
Inferior in bulk, degree, importance, etc.; less; smaller; of little account; as, minor divisions of a body.
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(Mus.) Less by a semitone in interval or difference of pitch; as, a minor third.
Asia Minor (Geog.), the Lesser Asia; that part of Asia which lies between the Euxine, or Black Sea, on the north, and the Mediterranean on the south.
Minor mode (Mus.), that mode, or scale, in which the third and sixth are minor, -- much used for mournful and solemn subjects.
Minor orders (Eccl.), the rank of persons employed in ecclesiastical offices who are not in holy orders, as doorkeepers, acolytes, etc.
Minor scale (Mus.) The form of the minor scale is various. The strictly correct form has the third and sixth minor, with a semitone between the seventh and eighth, which involves an augmented second interval, or three semitones, between the sixth and seventh, as, 6/F, 7/G[sharp], 8/A. But, for melodic purposes, both the sixth and the seventh are sometimes made major in the ascending, and minor in the descending, scale, thus: [1913 Webster] See Major.
Minor term of a syllogism (Logic), the subject of the conclusion.
Wikipedia
Minor orders are ranks of church ministry lower than major orders.
In the Catholic Church, the predominating Latin Church traditionally distinguished between the major holy orders of priest (including both bishop and presbyter), deacon and subdeacon, and the four minor orders, that of acolyte, exorcist, lector and porter in descending sequence.
In 1972, the minor orders were renamed "ministries", with those of lector and acolyte being kept throughout the Latin Church. The rites by which all four minor orders were conferred, but not the actual conferral of the order, are still employed for members of some Roman Catholic religious institutes and societies of apostolic life authorized to observe the 1962 form of the Roman Rite.
Some traditional Catholics continue to use minor orders, as do Old Roman Catholics and the Liberal Catholic Church
In the Orthodox Church, the three minor orders in use are those of subdeacon, reader and chanter.
Usage examples of "minor orders".
On the subject of rural bishops, or Chorepiscopi, who voted in tynods, and conferred the minor orders, See Thomassin, Discipline de l'Eglise, tom.
Too, some wore the garb of other Communities, all minor orders like the Reugge.
He was not sure that there was that severe a penalty for harming someone in Minor Orders.
He had been brought up by Irish missionary priests in South Africa, and he was now in minor orders.
I take it that being now in minor orders, you already possess the confidence of the Almighty.
Some part of his mind at once offered a flood of denials, excuses, attenuating circumstances, assertions of his distinguished merit, his unbroken record of observing Lent as strictly as any man not even in minor orders.
In his heart was a growing determination to set his trusty deacon, in minor orders alone though he might be, on the throne of Saint Peter.
I studied for minor orders from the I time I entered the abbey, and became full priest when I reached thirty years.
It seemed to be true that considerably more than half of those who went on pilgrimage were women, and that among the men the greater part were in their forties or fifties, and of those remaining, many would be in minor orders, either monastics or secular priests or would-be priests.