Word.ws English Dictionary

minor order

minor order noun: one of the orders of the Catholic or Orthodox Church lower than the major orders (diaconate and priesthood); especially (Catholicism, historical) the order of porter, lector, exorcist, or acolyte.

Noun

minor order (plural minor orders)

  1. (Orthodoxy) One of the orders of the Catholic or Orthodox Church lower than the major orders (diaconate and priesthood); especially (Catholicism, historical) the order of porter, lector, exorcist, or acolyte.
    • cleric in minor orders
    • After the oath and minor orders, he was ordained subdeacon June 14, 1710, and deacon and priest […]1875, Henry Foley, Records of the English province of the Society of Jesus ... in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, page 456
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see minor, order.

Examples of minor order in a sentence

  • The third minor order is that of reader.1898, abbé Luche, The Catechism of Rodez Explained in Form of Sermons, page 501:
  • The first Minor Order is the Ostiariate or the Order of Ostiary.1912, Louis Bacuez, Minor Orders:
  • Reader, cantor, and subdeacon are the most common minor orders in the contemporary Orthodox Church, though there are other minor orders from Orthodoxy’s past that might inform Orthodoxy’s future.2023, Carrie Frederick Frost, Church of Our Granddaughters, Wipf and Stock Publishers, →ISBN:

Forms of minor order

pluralminor orders

Questions about minor order

What does minor order mean?
Minor order means one of the orders of the Catholic or Orthodox Church lower than the major orders (diaconate and priesthood); especially (Catholicism, historical) the order of porter, lector, exorcist, or acolyte.
How do you use minor order in a sentence?
The third minor order is that of reader.
What part of speech is minor order?
Minor order is a noun.
What is the plural of minor order?
The plural of minor order is minor orders.

Words near minor order in the dictionary

  1. minor miracles
  2. minor mode
  3. minor modes
  4. minor ninth
  5. minor ninths
  6. minor order
  7. minor orders
  8. minor parties
  9. minor party
  10. minor penalties
  11. minor penalty

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: minor 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.

Last updated:

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