minor orders

British

plural noun

RC Church the four lower degrees of holy orders, namely porter, exorcist, lector, and acolyte Compare major orders

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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.

Mark Harvey, head of terrestrial zoology at the Western Australian Museum, keeps spreadsheets of the minor orders of arachnids — "I have what my colleagues call 'cataloguers' disease,'" he joked — and his data showed an amblypygid explosion.

From Salon

When de Miranda went away to college in Rio de Janeiro and learned about the minor orders of arachnids, he saw a weird discrepancy.

From Scientific American

Mark Harvey, head of terrestrial zoology at the Western Australian Museum, keeps spreadsheets of the minor orders of arachnids—“I have what my colleagues call ‘cataloguers’ disease,’” he joked—and his data showed an amblypygid explosion.

From Scientific American

To become a “sworn brother,” Bosch would have had to qualify as one of the four grades of minor orders, which were doorkeeper, reader, acolyte and exorcist.

From New York Times

Instead, Liszt took minor orders, concentrated his attention on church music, and henceforth spent his year between Rome, Weimar, and Budapest.

From Project Gutenberg

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023