hierarchy

Etymology

From Middle English ierarchie, jerarchie, from Old French ierarchie, jerarchie, from Late Latin ierarchia, from Latin hierarchia, from Ancient Greek ἱεραρχία (hierarkhía, “rule of a high priest”), from ἱεράρχης (hierárkhēs, “high priest”), from ἱερός (hierós, “holy”) + ἄρχω (árkhō, “I rule”). The H was re-added c. 1500 due to influence from Classical Latin.

noun

1. A body of authoritative officials organized in nested ranks.
   The [Washington] Post's proprietor through those turbulent [Watergate] days, Katharine Graham, held a double place in Washington’s hierarchy: at once regal Georgetown hostess and scrappy newshound, ready to hold the establishment to account. 2013-08-10, Lexington, “Keeping the mighty honest”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848
2. A social, religious, economic or political system or organization in which people or groups of people are ranked with some superior to others based on their status, authority or some other trait.
   Social defeat arises in strict social hierarchies in which the few dominate the many. Overcrowding exacerbates the many ills of social defeat within these social hierarchies based on dominance. June 7, 2023, Charles Hugh Smith, Look Around and What Do You See? Social Defeat
3. Any group of objects ranked so that every one but the topmost is subordinate to a specified one above it.
   ... the surviving portions provide enough detail to outline its principal features: the hierarchy of beings to whom his liturgy was to be addressed (we previously considered Plethon's hierarchy of gods in our examination of his Summary[…] 2017-06-01, Peter Mark Adams, The Game of Saturn: Decoding the Sola-Busca Tarocchi, Scarlet Imprint, page 158