Other forms: ordered, orders, ordering
To order something is to ask for it to be brought to you. You order a coffee at the counter, order a pizza to the door, order a lamp online and then follow the box across the country on your phone.
The noun is the thing you asked for: your order arrives Tuesday, and if it comes wrong you ring about it. Order also means arrangement — alphabetical order, in the right order, the order of names on a list — and the calm state where everything is where it belongs: put the papers in order. A third sense is a command, and it is sharp: the judge ordered him to pay, soldiers follow orders. Two phrases to keep: out of order on a broken lift, and a tall order for something very hard to ask of somebody. Ordering food is asking politely; ordering a person about is giving commands — one word, two very different forces.
1verborderTo ask for food, goods or a service to be brought or sent to you.
“We ordered two coffees and sat by the window.”
2verbcommandTo tell someone with authority that they must do something.
“The judge ordered him to pay the costs.”
3verbarrangeTo arrange things in a particular sequence.
“The files are ordered by date.”
4nounrequestA request for goods or food to be supplied, or the goods themselves.
“Your order should reach you by Thursday.”
5nounarrangedThe way things are arranged, one after another.
“Put the photographs in the order they were taken.”
synonyms: sequence
6nountidinessA state in which everything is in its proper place.
“It took an hour to bring the office back into order.”
synonyms: tidiness
7nouninstructionAn instruction given by someone in authority.
“The soldiers had orders not to leave the camp.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Latin ōrdō meant a row or a rank, and the picture underneath it is a loom: the row of threads laid out side by side before the weaving starts. Old French took it as ordre and English borrowed it whole. The related Latin ōrdior meant to begin — literally, to begin to weave. Alphabetical order and a coffee order both come from that idea of things put in their proper row.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂er-
Latin
ōrdō
Old French
ordne
Middle English
ordre
English, today
order
Built from
From Middle English ordre, from Old French ordne, from Latin ōrdō. From Middle English ordre, from Old French ordre, ordne, ordene (“order, rank”), from Latin ōrdinem, accusative of ōrdō (“row, rank, regular arrangement”) literally “row of threads in a loom”, from Proto-Italic ordō (“to arrange”), probably ultimately from Proto-Indo-European h₂or-d-, from h₂er-. Related to Latin ōrdior (“begin”) literally “begin to weave”. In sense “request for purchase”, compare bespoke. a doublet of ordo.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA