Definition

1. Verb:
   • To order or command something officially: To issue a formal decree, law, or command with authority.
   • To confer holy orders upon someone; to make someone a priest, minister, or rabbi: To invest a person with the authority and status of clergy in a religious ceremony.
   • To preordain or predestine; to decree something as inevitable: To order or decide something in advance, often by a divine or fateful power.

Examples of Usage

• Verb:
  • The king would ordain new laws for the kingdom.
  • She was ordained as a priest in a ceremony last year.
  • Fate had ordained that their paths would cross again.

Advanced Usage

• "to ordain that...": used to introduce the content of a formal decree or divine will.
  • The council ordained that all citizens must pay the new tax.
  • The prophecy ordained that a hero would rise to defeat the darkness.

Variants and Related Words

• Ordination (n): The act or ceremony of ordaining someone; the state of being ordained.
  • He attended his sister's ordination into the ministry.
• Preordain (v): To ordain or decide beforehand.
  • Some believe our destiny is preordained.

Synonyms

• Decree: To order something by an official authority.
• Enact: To make into law.
• Consecrate: To make or declare something sacred; often used in religious contexts similar to 'ordain'.

Related Phrasal Verbs / Constructions

(This word does not commonly form phrasal verbs. Its usage is typically direct.)

Related Idioms

• "As fate/God would ordain": Used to suggest that something happened because it was destined or willed by a higher power.
  • They met again, twenty years later, as fate would ordain.

Verb

1. issue an order
2. invest with ministerial or priestly authority
   • The minister was ordained only last month
3. appoint to a clerical posts
   • he was ordained in the Church
4. order by virtue of superior authority; decree
   • The King ordained the persecution and expulsion of the Jews
   • the legislature enacted this law in 1985