ORDINANCE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Ordinance

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/ˈɔrdənəns/ Listen

noun

Ordinance n.

Orderly arrangement; preparation; provision. (Obs.) "They had made their ordinance Of victual, and of other purveyance."

A rule established by authority; a permanent rule of action; a statute, law, regulation, rescript, or accepted usage; an edict or decree; esp., a local law enacted by a municipal government; as, a municipal ordinance. "Thou wilt die by God's just ordinance." "By custom and the ordinance of times." "Walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless." Note: Acts of Parliament are sometimes called ordinances; also, certain colonial laws and certain acts of Congress under Confederation; as, the ordinance of 1787 for the government of the territory of the United States northwest of the Ohio River; the colonial ordinance of 1641, or 1647. This word is often used in Scripture in the sense of a law or statute of sovereign power. Its most frequent application now in the United States is to laws and regulations of municipal corporations.

(Eccl.) An established rite or ceremony.

Rank; order; station. (Obs.)

Ordnance; cannon. (Obs.)

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Etymology of 'Ordinance'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Ordinance" Quotes from Famous Books

... elected by the Assembly a candidate to the chair of entomology, and at a following session (February 16th) De Blainville was unanimously elected a candidate for the chair of Molluscs, Vers et Zoophytes, and on the 16th of March the royal ordinance confirming those elections was received ...

— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... months; and upon performance of these conditions their wives and children were allowed to return; except such as having joined the enemy, were called upon by two proclamations to return in forty days, in pursuance of an ordinance of the legislature. All such as were sent out of the state for refusing to take the oath required of them by law and had returned. All such as subscribed addresses to Sir H. Clinton and Lord Cornwallis, ...

— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James

... to the whole north shore region having been surrendered to the Crown, no time was lost in opening the territory for settlement. Patrick McNiff, an assistant surveyor attached to the Ordinance Department, was ordered by Patrick Murray, Commandant at Detroit, to explore the north shore from Long Point westward and investigate the quality and situation of the land. His report is dated 16th June 1790. The following ...

— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne

... "Don't listen." As to his modern judgments—well for their own sakes professors of literature ought to bind themselves by oaths never to say anything about any author who was not safely dead twenty years before they were born. Such an ordinance would at any ...

— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... to obtain it. If anything, my dear fellow, deserves the degree of astonishment your face expresses, it should rather be my consenting to use disguise, and so breaking through a self-denying ordinance on which you have sometimes rallied me. Suspense—the danger from Bayonne hourly anticipated—had perhaps shaken my nerves. To be brief, I travelled to Nantes as Mr. Jonathan Buck, and in that name took passage in a vessel bound for Philadelphia and on the point ...

— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

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