Order ! Order !

"Order ! Order !" shouts the Speaker of the House of Commons. On his (or her) secretary's monitor, in-coming emails appear in date order. His wife has ordered a sirloin of beef from the butcher, while his son, as a young subaltern in Afghanistan, obeys the orders of his superior, his cousin is a clergyman in holy orders, and his aged mother wants to put her affairs in order.

Is the word 'order' really the same one in each instance ? Yes - and let's add ordnance, ordinary, ordination, subordinate and insubordination to the list.

Latin ordo/ordin- is a noun meaning a correctly straight line, a disciplined rank of soldiers, even a row of seats in the theatre. So the Speaker's shout is a reminder "Be orderly ! Keep in line!" The Latin verb ordino means to set in order, to regulate or govern; so the ordaining or ordination of a priest is a matter of the Church putting its servants into their appropriate rank. God himself (or Fate) is seen as 'ordaining' whatever happens: the result is seen as the proper way our world and the universe should work.

To 'subordinate' is to put something or someone into a lower rank. 'Insubordination' is a sort of 'breaking out of one's lower rank', not conforming to one's lower place in the hierarchy.

The Latin ordo/ordin- evolved over time into the French verb 'ordre', which English absorbed into its own vocabulary in the Middle English period some six or seven centuries ago. 'Order' meaning rank, proper control, is a fairly obvious derivation, accounting for our terms 'alphabetical order' and 'in good order'. Our verb 'order', meaning to command, derives from the military or government sense of the term. The housewife ordering her leg of lamb is commanding (however tacfully) her butcher to provide it.

Our term 'ordnance' (which lends its name to the Ordnance Survey which prepares our maps) strictly means 'artillery'. This originally referred to the regular, proper placement of large guns for defensive or offensive purposes; then to the guns themselves, collectively; and then to the military command responsible for such placement.

'Ordinary' implies 'the natural, proper, ordained, every-day state of things'; unexceptional.


Order ! Order !