Word.ws English Dictionary

on the order of

on the order of adverb: approximately.

Adverb

on the order of

  1. (often) Approximately.
    • [T]he rough number of mobile phones is on the order of 3 billion.2009 August 6, Maria Bartiromo, “Eric Schmidt on Where Google Is Headed”, in Businessweek, retrieved 16 Jun 2014
    • Still another former NSA whistleblower, the mathematician William Binney, has said that the NSA has "assembled on the order of 20 trillion transactions about US citizens with other US citizens".2013 July 15, Glenn Greenwald, “The crux of the NSA story in one phrase: 'collect it all'”, in The Guardian, UK, retrieved 16 Jun 2014

Preposition

on the order of

  1. In the manner of; along the lines of; like; of a similar kind to; more-or-less equivalent to.
    • [H]is philanthropy was more on the order of that of Jack Cade than it was Christian.1919, Elbert Hubbard, “John Wesley”, in Little Journeys: Vol. 9-Great Reformers
    • The earth's interior is somewhat on the order of an elaborate amusement-park tunnel of love.1959 Dec. 17, Bosley Crowther, "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (film review), New York Times (retrieved 16 June 2014)
    Synonyms:
    OTOO

Synonyms of on the order of

Questions about on the order of

What does on the order of mean?
On the order of means approximately.
What part of speech is on the order of?
On the order of can be an adverb or a preposition.

Words near on the order of in the dictionary

  1. on the nod
  2. on the nose
  3. on the nut
  4. on the off chance
  5. on the one hand
  6. on the order of
  7. on the other bus
  8. on the other hand
  9. on the other paw
  10. on the other side of
  11. on the otherhand

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on the order of (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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