hierarchical
Americanadjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of hierarchical
Explanation
If something is hierarchical it has clear levels of power and importance, such as a hierarchical corporation that has the boss at the top, or the hierarchical social order of junior high school popularity. It's lonely at the top. That pretty much sums up hierarchical, pronounced "high-eh-RAR-ki-cal." In a hierarchical structure, people or groups are arranged according to ability or status. It helps to think of a triangle, with the leader at the highest point, layers of managers under him or her, and at the base, or widest part, the masses of workers who make up the largest part of the organization.
Vocabulary lists containing hierarchical
Reading: Informational - High School
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Sapiens
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Guns, Germs, and Steel
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
"You can decompose a thought into subcomponents, like little atoms of logical propositions, and you can combine them in a hierarchical manner to make more complex structured rules, very akin to language."
From Science Daily ● Aug. 11, 2026
North Korean society is deeply hierarchical, with some analysts comparing it to a caste system.
From BBC ● Jun. 27, 2026
“I had been under this societal understanding that hierarchical love, placing one partner above everything else, was the ultimate romantic expression. I could name hundreds of movies that brought that up,” she said.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 8, 2026
The carrier was “too hierarchical, way too bureaucratic, way too process-oriented as opposed to outcomes-oriented,” Schulman told investors at a Morgan Stanley event last month.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 19, 2026
For most of its history Monte Alban was thus a huge village, not a true city, and certainly not a hierarchical state.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
