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.
Li and her colleagues adapted a machine learning tool called the Hierarchical Vision Transformer and trained it on standard tissue images.
From Science Daily • Jan. 2, 2024
Hierarchical structures like that described in court this week are common to cults of any description.
From The Guardian • May 11, 2019
The five-hour event started with a Hierarchical Divine Liturgy at noon.
From Washington Times • Aug. 29, 2016
Hierarchical status systems and the emergence of the status quo establishment create what we’ll refer to as the Status Dilemma, the “zero-sum” status contest that forms the core of many critiques of consumerism.
From Scientific American • May 8, 2015
Even as there are three divine notions and three intelligible regions, so there is a triple word, for the Hierarchical Order always manifests itself by threes.
From Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry by Pike, Albert
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.
