3. The customary mode of procedure; established system, as in the conduct of debates or the transaction of business; usage; custom; fashion. Dantiel. And, pregnant with his grander thought, Brought the old order into doubt. Emerson.
4. Conformity with law or decorum; freedom from disturbance; general tranquillity; public quiet; as, to preserve order in a community or an assembly.
5. That which prescribes a method of procedure; a rule or regulation made by competent authority; as, the rules and orders of the senate. The church hath authority to establish that for an order at one time which at another time it may abolish. Hooker.
6. A command; a mandate; a precept; a direction. Upon this new fright, an order was made by both houses for disarming all the papists in England. Clarendon.
7. Hence: A commission to purchase, sell, or supply goods; a direction, in writing, to pay money, to furnish supplies, to admit to a building, a place of entertainment, or the like; as, orders for blankets are large. In those days were pit orders — beshrew the uncomfortable manager who abolished them. Lamb.
8. A number of things or persons arranged in a fixed or suitable place, or relative position; a rank; a row; a grade; especially, a rank or class in society; a group or division of men in the same social or other position; also, a distinct character, kind, or sort; as, the higher or lower orders of society; talent of a high order. They are in equal order to their several ends. Jer. Taylor. Various orders various ensigns bear. Granville. Which, to his order of mind, must have seemed little short of crime. Hawthorne.
9. A body of persons having some common honorary distinction or rule of obligation; esp., a body of religious persons or aggregate of convents living under a common rule; as, the Order of the Bath; the Franciscan order. Find a barefoot brother out, One of our order, to associate me. Shak. The venerable order of the Knights Templars. Sir W. Scott.
10. An ecclesiastical grade or rank, as of deacon, priest, or bishop; the office of the Christian ministry; — often used in the plural; as, to take orders, or to take holy orders, that is, to enter some grade of the ministry.
11. (Arch.)
Defn: The disposition of a column and its component parts, and of the entablature resting upon it, in classical architecture; hence (as the column and entablature are the characteristic features of classical architecture) a style or manner of architectural designing.