HOLY ORDER

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does Holy Order mean? 

• HOLY ORDER (noun)
  The noun HOLY ORDER has 2 senses:

1. (usually plural) the status or rank or office of a Christian clergyman in an ecclesiastical hierarchy

2. the sacrament of ordination

  Familiarity information: HOLY ORDER used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HOLY ORDER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(usually plural) the status or rank or office of a Christian clergyman in an ecclesiastical hierarchy

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

Holy Order; Order

Context example:

theologians still disagree over whether 'bishop' should or should not be a separate Order

Hypernyms ("Holy Order" is a kind of...):

position; status (the relative position or standing of things or especially persons in a society)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "Holy Order"):

acolyte (someone who assists a priest or minister in a liturgical service; a cleric ordained in the highest of the minor orders in the Roman Catholic Church but not in the Anglican Church or the Eastern Orthodox Churches)

anagnost (a cleric in the minor orders of the Eastern Orthodox Church who reads the lessons aloud in the liturgy (analogous to the lector in the Roman Catholic Church))

deacon (a cleric ranking just below a priest in Christian churches; one of the Holy Orders)

doorkeeper; ostiarius; ostiary (the lowest of the minor Holy Orders in the unreformed Western Church but now suppressed by the Roman Catholic Church)

exorcist (one of the minor orders in the unreformed Western Church but now suppressed in the Roman Catholic Church)

lector; reader (someone who reads the lessons in a church service; someone ordained in a minor order of the Roman Catholic Church)

priest (a clergyman in Christian churches who has the authority to perform or administer various religious rites; one of the Holy Orders)

subdeacon (a clergyman an order below deacon; one of the Holy Orders in the unreformed western Christian church and the eastern Catholic Churches but now suppressed in the Roman Catholic Church)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The sacrament of ordination

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("holy order" is a kind of...):

sacrament (a formal religious ceremony conferring a specific grace on those who receive it; the two Protestant ceremonies are baptism and the Lord's Supper; in the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church there are seven traditional rites accepted as instituted by Jesus: baptism and confirmation and Holy Eucharist and penance and holy orders and matrimony and extreme unction)

Meronyms (parts of "holy order"):

ordinance; ordination (the act of ordaining; the act of conferring (or receiving) holy orders)