Word.ws English Dictionary

higher-order

higher-order adjective: involving more sophisticated thinking or reasoning.

Adjective

higher-order (not comparable)

  1. Involving more sophisticated thinking or reasoning.
    • higher-order thinking
  2. Of or relating to a class higher up in a hierarchy.
    • It is at least plausible that expert-level crime policy rulemaking (in the interest of reform) may be necessary in a system... [which] will thus remain susceptible to the prospect of punitive populism arising within any one of an array of higher-order bounded publics.2021, Trevor George Gardner, “By Any Means: A Philosophical Frame for Rulemaking Reform in Criminal Law”, in Yale Law Journal Forum, page 819
  3. Of order 2 or greater.

Origin of higher-order

From higher + order.

Phrases with higher-order

Questions about higher-order

What does higher-order mean?
Higher-order means involving more sophisticated thinking or reasoning.
What part of speech is higher-order?
Higher-order is an adjective.

Words near higher-order in the dictionary

  1. higher-intensity
  2. higher-IQ
  3. higher-level
  4. higher-lying
  5. higher-octane
  6. higher-order
  7. higher-order function
  8. higher-order functions
  9. higher-paid
  10. higher-paying
  11. higher-performance

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: higher-order (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “higher-order.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/higher-order. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.