Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Hierarchy
/ˈhaɪərɑːrki/noun
A ranked system in which each level answers to the one above it.
The Greek roots
ἱερός
hierós
sacred, holy
ἀρχή
archḗ
rule, first authority
Literally: “rule of the sacred”
The story of the word
The word starts in angelology. A writer of about 500 AD using the name Dionysius the Areopagite sorted the angels into nine ranks in three triads and called the arrangement ἱεραρχία, the government of a chief priest. English had it by the fourteenth century for the orders of heaven, then for church government, and only in the nineteenth century for the ranks of an office or an army. The first element also gives hieroglyph, sacred carving.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Medieval Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
hieroglyphanarchymonarchypatriarch
In a sentence
Nothing moves in that company without three levels of the hierarchy signing it off.