Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The arrangement of elements in a literary or artistic composition or an architectural plan.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Ordering; coördination; specifically, in the fine arts, the proper disposition of figures in a picture, or of the parts of a building, or of any work of art; ordinance.
  • noun An ordinance; a law.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Fine Arts) The disposition of the parts of any composition with regard to one another and the whole.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun art The disposition of the parts of any composition with regard to one another and the whole.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French, variant of Old French ordenance, an arranging; see ordinance.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

French. See ordinance.

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Examples

  • Listen: hear Jean-Marc pronounce the word ordonnance: Download ordonnance2.wav

    ordonnance - French Word-A-Day 2006

  • Listen: hear Jean-Marc pronounce the word ordonnance: Download ordonnance2. wav

    ordonnance - French Word-A-Day 2006

  • Listen: hear Jean-Marc pronounce the word ordonnance: Download ordonnance2. wav

    French Word-A-Day: 2006

  • Listen: hear Jean-Marc pronounce the word ordonnance: Download ordonnance2. wav

    French Word-A-Day: 2006

  • Permission granted, we are given the X-rays, the ordonnance, * and a paper that reads "Surveillance à domicile en cas de traumatisme cranien chez un enfant."

    French Word-A-Day: 2009

  • Expressions: rédiger une ordonnance = to fill a prescription

    French Word-A-Day: 2006

  • I hand over my ordonnance* and the pharmacist squints her eyes trying to decode the doctor's gribouillage* before pulling out drawers and opening cupboards to locate the "cures".

    French Word-A-Day: 2006

  • Procès-verbal des opérations de teintures faites à Yvetot, par le sieur François Gonin, sur les orders du conseil, en présence des sieurs Commissiaires nommés par ordonnance de M. l'Indendant de la Ville and Generalité de Rouen du 11 mai 1756, and sous l'inspection du sieur Godinet, inspecteur principal des manufactures de toiles and toileries de ladite généralité, and commis par le Conseil à cet effet.

    The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-Century Europe 2006

  • Wednesday, March 22, 2006 ordonnance poster image by Andre Renoux

    French Word-A-Day: 2006

  • Un beau désordre vaut mieux qu'une inerte ordonnance.

    French Word-A-Day: 2006

Comments

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  • Over and over, page after page, in the 1616 Folio and in subsequent work, he Jonson proves the amenability, in his hands, of racy and natural English to a discipline of perspicuity without dilution, elegance without ornamentation, ordonnance without cramping, and vigor without looseness.

    - introduction to Ben Jonson, in Seventeenth Century Poetry: The Schools of Donne and Jonson, Hugh Kenner (ed.) (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964).

    April 13, 2009