How to Use hierarchy in a Sentence

hierarchy

noun
  • He was at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy.
  • The church hierarchy faced resistance to some of their decisions.
  • And food conferred a place in a hierarchy of the scarred.
    The Economist, 16 June 2018
  • The hierarchy should always be those with the least go first.
    John Surico, Curbed, 16 Oct. 2023
  • In the hierarchy of the ship’s crew, the mail clerks were somewhere in the middle.
    Susan Seubert, Smithsonian Magazine, 19 Aug. 2021
  • The word is still spoken and the sense of racial hierarchy is still intact.
    Michael K. McIntyre, cleveland, 13 Oct. 2019
  • The hierarchy of power at the box office is about to change.
    J. Kim Murphy, Variety, 22 Oct. 2022
  • There’s this whole weird hierarchy where the chef is revered as this god.
    Alyson Sheppard, Robb Report, 24 June 2021
  • And someone high up in the hierarchy often needs to serve as that voice.
    Sarah Scoles, Wired, 28 May 2021
  • Lue dismissed the idea of any kind of hierarchy, saying the team just needs to play the right way.
    Chris Fedor, cleveland.com, 19 Jan. 2018
  • Other than that, the meeting is by men and for men — the hierarchy of the church.
    Nicole Winfield, The Seattle Times, 20 Feb. 2019
  • The social hierarchy part of the film is not presented in black and white.
    Bill Goodykoontz, The Arizona Republic, 7 Feb. 2023
  • At the very same time that big money was on the rise, the power of the Catholic hierarchy was on the wane.
    Katherine Stewart, The New Republic, 9 Mar. 2021
  • The hierarchy of power in the Shrek universe is about to change.
    Brendan Morrow, The Week, 4 Apr. 2023
  • The new cuts conform to the state’s hierarchy of water rights.
    Kurtis Alexander, San Francisco Chronicle, 20 Aug. 2021
  • The mass of the Higgs is one aspect of what is known as the hierarchy problem in physics.
    The Economist, 13 Jan. 2018
  • Often there’s no hierarchy in the way the images are laid out.
    Ray Mark Rinaldi, The Know, 26 Mar. 2020
  • In some senses, the top of the large cardinal hierarchy is in sight.
    Dave Linkletter, Popular Mechanics, 22 July 2022
  • His ascent in the church hierarchy was even swifter than his rise in the oil industry.
    Mark Landler, New York Times, 22 Dec. 2023
  • Wisconsin is known as the land of beer and cheese — but brats are often the next in the hierarchy of state foods.
    Jordyn Noennig, Journal Sentinel, 30 Mar. 2023
  • Luckily, there is a place for both in the hierarchy of the spirit world.
    Beth Segal, cleveland, 28 May 2021
  • To speak to a Jew would be to lose one’s place in our boyish hierarchy.
    Cathleen Schine, The New York Review of Books, 16 Mar. 2021
  • But when the trip goes awry, the social hierarchy onboard shifts.
    Douglas Greenwood, Vogue, 30 May 2022
  • In her own words, the brash, scathing sound was born from a primal need to resist the hierarchy.
    Tanu I. Raj, Billboard, 13 Feb. 2023
  • And the hierarchy of the ship is so ill-defined that even when mutiny brews, the stakes of the conflict remain vague.
    Stephen Kearse, The Atlantic, 15 Apr. 2022
  • Four teams will face higher seeds from the three conferences above them in the hierarchy.
    Erick Smith, USA TODAY, 21 Mar. 2021
  • Layers above it in the hierarchy might zero in on the structure’s shape.
    Carl Engelking, Discover Magazine, 10 Mar. 2017
  • This hierarchy applies to small and mega-projects alike.
    The Economist, 14 Nov. 2019
  • While status was clear among the dukes and earls at the top of the hierarchy, things got fuzzy among the low-ranking nobles.
    Melissa Mohr, The Christian Science Monitor, 27 June 2022
  • Maybe some of them see a chance to rise through a hierarchy, despite the murky morality of the drug business.
    Deborah Bonello, Los Angeles Times, 14 Nov. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hierarchy.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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