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Synonyms

well-ordered

American  
[wel-awr-derd] / ˈwɛlˈɔr dərd /

adjective

  1. arranged, planned, or occurring in a desirable way, sequence, etc.

well-ordered British  

adjective

  1. logic maths (of a relation) having the property that every nonempty subset of its field has a least member under the relation: less than is well-ordered on the natural numbers but not on the reals, since an open set has no least member

"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

Etymology

Origin of well-ordered

First recorded in 1600–10

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.

It should be possible—and it is essential to a well-ordered society—to call out morally reprehensible behavior by your own side as well as by your opponents.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 27, 2025

Local resident Reka told me she couldn't understand how an attack like this could have happened in her well-ordered city.

From BBC • Jun. 10, 2025

Three years later, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture whisked them off to a quaint fictional village in the west of England, zigzagging through arable fields and well-ordered front gardens.

From New York Times • Jun. 17, 2024

If the material is charged slowly, everything proceeds in a well-ordered way.

From Science Daily • May 21, 2024

But the land became steadily more tame and well-ordered.

From "The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien

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.