From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishhierarchyhier‧ar‧chy /ˈhaɪrɑːki $ -ɑːr-/ ●○○ AWL noun (plural hierarchies) 1 [countable, uncountable]SSPOSITION/RANK a system of organization in which people or things are divided into levels of importance a rigid social hierarchy She worked her way up through the corporate hierarchy to become president.2 [countable]SSO the most important and powerful members of an organization the church hierarchy
Examples from the Corpus
hierarchy• Linguistic units tend to form a hierarchy of extent.• The school district reorganized the administrative hierarchy, which helped to save money.• In the human management of distributed control, hierarchies of a certain type will proliferate rather than diminish.• Tatawi worked her way up through the corporate hierarchy to become President.• The dominance hierarchies of primates are often more complex, overlapping networks, rather than the simple ladder of the hen hierarchy.• Formal organisations have an explicit hierarchy in a well- defined structure; job specifications and communication channels are also well-defined.• Genotti was thought to be number two in the Sicilian Mafia hierarchy.• A good conceptual clusterer is one which finds a succinct meaningful hierarchy of succinct definitions of meaningful concepts.• You just create a new hierarchy and reset the thermostat.• Smith has the backing of the Republican hierarchy.• The caste system categorized Hindus into a social hierarchy.• In the social hierarchy, these lords of big business were the equivalent of the daimyos of the past with their clans.• Figure 2.2 reflects an organisation without a strict hierarchy where everyone is working quite independently.From Longman Business Dictionaryhierarchyhi‧er‧ar‧chy /ˈhaɪrɑːki-ɑːr-/ noun (plural hierarchies)1[countable, uncountable]HUMAN RESOURCES an organization or structure in which the staff are organized in levels and the people at one level have authority over those below themMany companies have restructured theirorganizational hierarchies.the key men in the company hierarchy → see also Maslow's hierarchy of needs2[countable]COMPUTING a structure in which files, information etc are organized in levels, each one being reached from the previous oneEach disk is divided into a hierarchy of directories. —hierarchical adjectiveResearch shows that hierarchical organisations are slow to respond to change.a hierarchical structure of files —hierarchically adverbThe police bureaucracy is organized hierarchically.Origin hierarchy (1300-1400) Old French ierarchie, from Latin, from Greek hierarches, from hieros “holy” + -arches “ruler” (from archein “to rule”) 