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