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any system of persons or things ranked one above another.
government by ecclesiastical rulers.
the power or dominion of a hierarch.
an organized body of ecclesiastical officials in successive ranks or orders:
the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
one of the three divisions of the angels, each made up of three orders, conceived as constituting a graded body.
Also called celestial hierarchy. the collective body of angels.
government by an elite group.
Linguistics. the system of levels according to which a language is organized, as phonemic, morphemic, syntactic, or semantic.
Contemporary Examples

In the hierarchy of Things That Are Bad, rockets and bombs flying/being flown across borders is right near the top.
Meanwhile, On The West Bank… Emily L. Hauser November 26, 2012

One could almost put the hierarchy of icons in descending order of: Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr, and Barack Obama.
The City that Care Forgot November 8, 2012

It was, I have to say, at the bottom of the hierarchy of royal honors, a British Empire Medal.
I Saw Nuclear Armageddon Sitting on My Desk Clive Irving November 9, 2014

Absolutely: “Courage I would rank now in the hierarchy of art and love.”
Mailer’s Letters Pack a Punch and a Surprising Degree of Sweetness Ronald K. Fried December 13, 2014

So the question of how this happened and who in the BBC hierarchy knew precisely what and when, have become critical.
Jimmy Savile Scandal Reaches New York Times Steve Hewlett October 31, 2012

Historical Examples

The monks were the “regulars” who formed the spiritual nobility and not the ruling class in the hierarchy.
The Rise of the Mediaeval Church Alexander Clarence Flick

There is no hierarchy in Buddhism: it is a religion of absolute freedom.
The Soul of a People H. Fielding

My orders were to rise in the El Hassan hierarchy and await further orders.
Border, Breed Nor Birth Dallas McCord Reynolds

Nowhere do you find a hierarchy more prevalent than among them.
The Nabob Alphonse Daudet

It was considered heretical to even speak of stinting the wealth that was freely poured into the coffers of the hierarchy.
The Story of Seville Walter M. Gallichan

noun (pl) -chies
a system of persons or things arranged in a graded order
a body of persons in holy orders organized into graded ranks
the collective body of those so organized
a series of ordered groupings within a system, such as the arrangement of plants and animals into classes, orders, families, etc
(linguistics, maths) a formal structure, usually represented by a diagram of connected nodes, with a single uppermost element Compare ordering, heterarchy, tree (sense 6)
government by an organized priesthood
n.

mid-14c., from Old French ierarchie, from Medieval Latin hierarchia “ranked division of angels” (in the system of Dionysius the Areopagite), from Greek hierarkhia “rule of a high priest,” from hierarkhes “high priest, leader of sacred rites,” from ta hiera “the sacred rites” (neuter plural of hieros “sacred;” see ire) + arkhein “to lead, rule” (see archon). Sense of “ranked organization of persons or things” first recorded 1610s, initially of clergy, sense probably influenced by higher. Related: Hierarchal; hierarchical.

An organisation with few things, or one thing, at the top and with several things below each other thing. An inverted tree structure. Examples in computing include a directory hierarchy where each directory may contain files or other directories; a hierarchical network (see hierarchical routing), a class hierarchy in object-oriented programming.
(1994-10-11)