means The act of arranging things or people in order according to some measure of importance, quality, or success, or the position something occupies in such an order.

from From 'rank,' which arrived in English from Old French 'ranc' (a line or row), itself likely borrowed from a Germanic source — a cousin of the word that gives us 'ring,' carrying the old sense of a circle or row of people. Originally a military term for a line of soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder, it grew into the idea of grades and positions, and the '-ing' form turned that into the busy modern habit of sorting everything into tidy lines.