open order

1. 1.

   a military formation leaving enough space between ranks to allow an inspecting officer to pass

   Broadermilitary formation

   military

Questions about open order

What does open order mean?

open order means "a military formation leaving enough space between ranks to allow an inspecting officer to pass".

Is open order a common word?

open order is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.