rank

Your rank is your place in an order everyone can see — sergeant above corporal, seed one above seed two. The stripes on a sleeve, the number printed beside a player's name.

It is a verb as well: critics rank the album among his best, and England rank second in the world. A rank is also a line of people or things side by side — a rank of taxis outside the station, soldiers standing in ranks, and on a chessboard the ranks are the rows running across while the files run up. The ranks, plural, means the ordinary members of an organisation, which is where rise through the ranks and close ranks come from. Then there is a separate word wearing the same spelling: rank as an adjective means a smell is strong, stale and bad enough to make you step back — rank socks, a rank drain. It survives as a plain intensifier in a few fixed pairs too, as in a rank outsider.

Phrases it lives in

• close ranks — join together to protect the group from outside criticism
• rise through the ranks — be promoted step by step from the bottom
• pull rank — use your higher position to get your way
• the rank and file — the ordinary members, not the leaders

Also practised as

• nounA row of squares running across the board.