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emperor

nouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈɛmp(ə)ɹə//
  • United Kingdom//ˈɛmpʰ(ə)ɹə//
  • Australia//ˈemp(ə)ɹə//
  • Australia/[ˈempʰ(ə)ɹə]/
  • New Zealand//ˈe̝mp(ɘ)ɹɘ//

The male monarch or ruler of an empire.

noun

  1. 1

    The male monarch or ruler of an empire.

    In imperial China, it was often a responsibility of the emperor to evaluate his predecessor after the latter's death.

    They asked Julius Caesar, the valiant Roman emperor, what was the best death. He answered, that which is unexpected, which comes suddenly and unforeseen

  2. 2

    Any monarch ruling an empire, irrespective of gender, with "empress" contrasting to mean the consort of an emperor.

    In 690 Wu usurped the throne and became Emperor herself, which proved a unique event in the history of China.

    After his death in 683 she ruled for seven years as regent and then, deposing her son, became emperor herself, the only woman in Chinese history to hold the title.

    Empress, imperial regent, and even emperor herself (r. 797–802), Irene was an important and powerful figure at the Byzantine court in the late eighth and early ninth century.

    Originally the wife of the emperor, she engineered the imperial succession so that she could serve first as regent to a boy emperor and then as emperor herself.

  3. 3

    Specifically, the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire; the world-monarch.

    The Investiture Controversy was a conflict between the Emperor and the Pope.

  4. 4

    The fourth trump or major arcana card of the tarot deck.

  5. 5

    A large, relatively valuable marble in children's games.

    But marbles are not only used to play games: they are also traded. In this market, the value of the different kinds of marbles (oilies, emperors, etc.) is determined by local supply and demand and not by the price of the marbles […]

  6. 6

    Any fish of the family Lethrinidae.

  7. 7

    Any of various butterflies of the subfamily Charaxinae.

  8. 8

    Any of various large dragonflies of the cosmopolitan genus Anax.

  9. 9

    An emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri).

    We do not know if the emperors are monogamous. I know some of the penguins species mate for life.

    During pairing, mates walk an average of only 90 m per day, and, while incubating, male emperors move an average of 30 m per day.

    If they were emperors, I wanted a better view. Being told they were emperors was no good; I needed to see them. But as quickly as we had spotted them, they spotted us. Sliding on their bellies, two emperors began to rush over.

Etymology

From Middle English emperour, from Anglo-Norman emperour, from Latin imperātorem, derived from imperō (“to command”). Doublet of imperator. Displaced earlier Old English casere, from Latin Caesar.

Forms

plural
emperors
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).