ORDINAL • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Ordinal

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noun

Ordinal n.

A word or number denoting order or succession.

(Ch. of Eng.) The book of forms for making, ordaining, and consecrating bishops, priests, and deacons.

(R. C. Ch.) A book containing the rubrics of the Mass. (Written also ordinale)

adjective

Ordinal adj.

Indicating order or succession; as, the ordinal numbers, first, second, third, etc. Contrasted to cardinal.

Of or pertaining to an order.

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Etymology of 'Ordinal'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Ordinal" Quotes from Famous Books

... body,—nothing of the relations between its form and its structure,—nothing of the relative complication of its organization as compared with other allied animals,—nothing of the general mode of execution,—nothing of the plan expressed in that mode of execution. Yet, with the exception of the ordinal characters, which, since they imply relative superiority and inferiority, require, of course, a number of specimens for comparison, his one animal would tell him all this as well as ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... two hundred known orders of plants; of these not one is certainly known to exist exclusively in the fossil state. The whole lapse of geological time has as yet yielded not a single new ordinal type of ...

— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... these cases is exhibited by the imitation. There need be little or virtually no zoological affinity between the imitating and the imitated forms; that is to say, in some cases the zoological affinity is not closer than ordinal, and therefore cannot possibly be ascribed to kinship. Like all the other branches of the general subject of protective resemblance in form or colouring, this branch has already been so largely illustrated by previous writers, that, as in the previous cases, I need only ...

— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes