rank
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ɹæŋk/
rhymes: -æŋk
Forms: form: ranks
form: ranck
Etymology: From Middle English rank (“line, row”), from Old French ranc, rang, reng (“line, row, rank”) (Modern French rang), from Frankish *hring (“ring”), from Proto-Germanic *hringaz (“something bent or curved”).
Akin to Old High German (h)ring, Old Frisian hring, Old English hring, hrincg (“ring”), Old Norse hringr (“ring, circle, queue, sword; ship”). Doublet of ring and rink.
Senses: examples: text: The front rank kneeled to reload while the second rank fired over their heads.
text: The Musketeers being on both flancks, firſt firing let the Ranck ſtand, and fire every Ranck, paſſing through before his leader[…]
ref: 1684, Richard Elton, The compleat body of the Art Military […] , 2nd edition, page 196:
text: Then there was no more cover, for they straggled out, not in ranks but clusters, from among orange trees and tall, flowering shrubs[…].
ref: 1907 January, Harold Bindloss, chapter 7, in The Dust of Conflict, 1st Canadian edition, Toronto, Ont.: McLeod & Allen, →OCLC:
antonyms: file
glosses: A row of people or things organized in a grid pattern, often soldiers.
topics: board-games
chess
games
antonyms: file
glosses: One of the eight horizontal lines of squares on a chessboard (i.e., those identified by a number).
examples: text: The ranks are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King, and Ace.
topics: card-games
games
glosses: The value of a playing card.
topics: entertainment
lifestyle
music
glosses: In a pipe organ, a set of pipes of a certain quality for which each pipe corresponds to one key or pedal.
examples: text: Based on your test scores, you have a rank of 23.
text: The fancy hotel was of the first rank.
glosses: One's position in a list sorted by a shared property such as physical location, population, popularity, or quality.
glosses: The level of one's position in a class-based society.
examples: text: a membership drawn from the ranks of wealthy European businessmen
text: Earlier this month police in Norfolk were called after five hives thought to contain around 60,000 bees and £600 worth of honey were taken. [...] Suspicions among beekeepers that the culprits come from their own ranks were underlined by the fact that a bee smoker was left at the scene by someone who presumably knew that it could be used to calm the insects before taking them.
ref: 2017 September 23, “From north Wales to Norfolk, distraught beekeepers ask: who’s stealing our hives?”, in The Observer:
qualifier: typically in the plural
glosses: A category of people, such as those who share an occupation or belong to an organisation.
examples: text: Private First Class (PFC) is the second-lowest rank in the Marines.
text: He rose up through the ranks of the company, from mailroom clerk to CEO.
glosses: A hierarchical level in an organization such as the military.
examples: text: Phylum is the taxonomic rank below kingdom and above class.
topics: biology
natural-sciences
taxonomy
glosses: A level in a scientific taxonomy system.
topics: mathematics
sciences
glosses: The dimensionality of an array (computing) or tensor.
topics: linear-algebra
mathematics
sciences
glosses: The maximal number of linearly independent columns (or rows) of a matrix.
topics: algebra
mathematics
sciences
glosses: The maximum quantity of D-linearly independent elements of a module (over an integral domain D).
topics: mathematics
sciences
glosses: The size of any basis of a given matroid.
Derived terms: back rank
back-rank mate
break rank
cab off the rank
cab rank
cab-rank rule
circuit rank
close ranks
coal rank
de-rank
flag rank
full rank
keep rank
Kendall rank correlation coefficient
low-rank
military rank
ordinal rank
other rank
pull rank
rank and file
rank-and-file
rank-and-filer
rank and yank
rank badge
rank-deficient
rank-nullity theorem
rank of apparition
rank outsider
rank sum
Spearman's rank correlation coefficient
S rank
stack rank
taxi rank