Other forms: ordained, ordaining, ordains
To ordain is to make somebody a priest, or to decree by authority. Ordain a bishop, ordained in 1990, as fate ordained.
The religious sense is a formal act with a defined ritual, and who may be ordained is one of the sharpest disputes in several churches. The other sense is grand and usually about fate or law: it was ordained that. Note order, from the same Latin — ordaining is putting into an order.
1verbpriestTo make somebody a priest.
“He was ordained at the cathedral and sent to serve a small parish in the hills.”
2verbordainTo decree by authority.
“The king ordained that every town must hold a market on Saturdays.”
ordain is a decreeing or consecrating.
The Latin is simply order. To ordain a priest is to place them formally into the order of the church; to ordain a law is to set it in force by the same authority.
hooks ontoorder
Latin ordinare means to put in order, from ordo, order. Order, ordinary and coordinate come from the same order.
Latin
ordinare — to order
Old French
ordiner
Middle English
ordeynen
English, today
ordain
Built from
From Middle English ordeynen, from Old French ordiner, from Latin ordinare (“to order”), from ordo (“order”). a doublet of ordinate.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA