organise
Formsorganises, organising, organised
US spellingorganize · also used in the UK
- 1To plan an event or activity, or arrange for something to be provided, and see to everything needed for it.
Local volunteers organise a charity fun run in the park every autumn.
I'll organise a taxi to meet you at the station when your train gets in.
UsageYou organise an event or a thing you need (organise a party, a taxi); you can also organise for someone to do something.
Similararrange, plan, run, coordinate, stage
- 2To put something into an orderly arrangement so that it functions properly.
It took the new manager a month to organise the stockroom so that orders could go out on time.
Before the audit, the accountant organised the company's records into a system anyone could follow.
UsageThings are organised into groups or by a feature (by date, by colour); to get organised is to sort out your own things and plans.
- 3To give something a structure of separate parts, each with its own role or relation to the others.
Most armies organise their soldiers into units of a fixed size with set duties.
The founders organised the new party into local branches, each answering to a regional office.
UsageUsually with into for the parts, often in the passive: the army is organised into units, the party into branches.
Note
The use for building a body out of parts, each with its own role or relation to the rest. In Marbury v. Madison (1803) the people's "original and supreme will" organises the government and assigns its departments their powers. Where the tidying meaning puts existing things in order, this one gives a group its parts and their roles, which is why it suits armies, parties and governments rather than stockrooms.
- 4To join together, or bring people together, in a union or similar body that can bargain and act as one.
Staff at the distribution centre voted to organise after years of zero-hours contracts.
Activists have been trying to organise care workers, who are often spread across dozens of small employers.
UsageWorkers simply organise (no need to add into a union), and union officials organise workers. Unionise means much the same.
Less common meanings
- 5To give something organs and a living structure, making it able to carry out the processes of life.
UsageMostly as organised before a noun: organised matter, a highly organised being (a complex living thing, not an efficient person).
Note
Older writers set it against dead matter, so it meant built of working organs, in short alive. In the 1701 edition of John Ray's The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation, first published in 1691, Ray reports Edward Tyson's argument that matter organised could never produce the mind's nobler faculties.
- 6In music, to perform a piece by singing it in several vocal parts, each voice taking its own line.
Formerly , those Catholic priests who sung in parts : so to sing , was to organize
1828, Thomas Busby, A Complete Dictionary of Music
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English organizen, partly from Middle French organiser and partly from Medieval Latin organizo, from Latin organum ('organ').