the.com/rank
A word so confident in its own order it means both 'top of the class' and 'smells like a locker room.'
means To rank is to hold a position in an ordered series, or — in its other life — to be foul-smelling, overgrown, or flagrantly excessive.
from These are really two words wearing one coat. The 'position/row' sense comes from Old French 'renc/ranc' (a line or row), itself from a Germanic root meaning 'ring' or 'circle' — think soldiers lined up in formation, which is why military 'rank and file' still smells of parade grounds. The 'foul, overgrown' sense is a separate, older Germanic word, related to Old English 'ranc' meaning proud, strong, or overgrowing — a field of rank weeds was originally 'too vigorous' before it became 'too stinky.' The two senses collided in English by coincidence of spelling, not ancestry, but centuries of use have fused them into one deliciously two-faced word.
- military roots
- originally meant a literal row of soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder
- chess connection
- rows on a chessboard are still called ranks
- smelly cousin
- rank meaning foul-smelling comes from a totally different old word, 'ranc,' meaning overgrown
- math flex
- in linear algebra rank measures a matrix's true dimensional swagger