emperor
Pluralemperors
- 1The male monarch who rules over an empire.
When the old emperor died, his eldest son was crowned before the whole court.
Roman emperors stamped their portraits on coins so that every subject knew who ruled them.
Note
A commander stands behind the title: Latin imperātor, from imperō, "to command", passed through Anglo-Norman emperour into Middle English. Imperator survives beside it as a doublet, the same Latin word borrowed again. Emperor displaced an older English title, casere, taken from the name Caesar, so the old word and the new one both go back to Rome.
- 2Short for emperor penguin, the Antarctic species Aptenodytes forsteri.
Through the long lens we watched an emperor waddle toward the edge of the colony.
All winter the male emperors stand on the ice with an egg balanced on their feet.
Note
The clipped form appears once the context has made the species clear, and it sits most comfortably in the plural: researchers write of male emperors moving barely 30 meters a day while incubating, and Lindsay McCrae called his 2019 book My Penguin Year: Living with the Emperors. On first mention, emperor penguin is the safer choice.
- 3A monarch ruling an empire, whether a man or a woman, where empress is kept to mean an emperor's wife.
Rather than settle for the title of empress, she had herself crowned emperor and ruled in her own name.
In the game, any player who unites the provinces is crowned emperor, whether the character is a man or a woman.
Note
When a woman held the throne in her own right, historians reach for emperor and keep empress for a ruler's wife. Wu, who took the Chinese throne in 690 and is the only woman in Chinese history to hold the title, and Irene at the Byzantine court (r. 797–802) are both said to have become emperor herself, a phrase that marks sovereign power rather than marriage.
- 4The ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, regarded as the world-monarch.
Imperial theorists argued that the Emperor stood above every other Christian king.
Lawyers of the period debated whether the Emperor's authority came directly from God or through the Pope.
Note
European political history uses the bare, capitalized Emperor for this one ruler: the Investiture Controversy was a conflict between the Emperor and the Pope, with no further name needed. Behind the title stood the theory of a world-monarch, a single ruler set above every other king, so the word carried a claim as well as a rank.
- 5The tarot card that is the fourth trump of the major arcana.
The Emperor came up in the center of her spread, and the reader took it as a call for firmer rules at work.
The deck's artist painted the Emperor on a stone throne, holding a scepter.
Note
The card is written with a capital and the article, like the rest of the major arcana: a reader turns up the Emperor, not an emperor. In cartomancy it is generally taken to stand for authority, order and firm control, often in the shape of a father figure or a boss.
- 6Any of various large dragonflies of the genus Anax, which is found throughout the world.
An emperor patrolled the length of the pond, its long blue body flashing as it snapped up midges.
Male emperors guard a stretch of shoreline and chase off rival dragonflies.
Note
The genus Anax belongs to the family Aeshnidae, big dragonflies that hunt on the wing: they patrol back and forth over water for long stretches and catch other insects in flight instead of waiting on a perch. Because the genus is cosmopolitan, the name is not tied to any one country's fauna.
- 7Any of various butterflies belonging to the subfamily Charaxinae.
An emperor settled on a fallen mango and uncoiled its tongue to feed on the fermenting juice.
Collectors bait traps with rotting bananas to draw emperors down from the forest canopy.
Note
Butterfly watchers apply the name across the Charaxinae, a whole subfamily rather than one species: stout-bodied, powerful fliers whose adults often feed on rotting fruit, tree sap or dung instead of flower nectar. In a field guide, let the context decide, since dragonfly watchers have an emperor of their own.
- 8Any of the fish that make up the family Lethrinidae.
Divers watched an emperor nose through the sand beside the coral, hunting for crabs.
Reef anglers prize emperors for their firm white flesh.
- 9A large marble of relatively high value in children's marble games.
Winning an emperor off the older boys made him the hero of the playground for a week.
The kids valued emperors far above ordinary marbles and swapped them only for a good price.
Note
Children's marble trading has its named kinds, oilies and emperors among them. In The Economic Psychology of Everyday Life (2001), Paul Webley observes that their worth is set by local supply and demand rather than by what the marbles cost, so an emperor's standing can change from one playground to the next.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English emperour, from Anglo-Norman emperour, from Latin imperātorem, derived from imperō ("to command"). It is a doublet of imperator, and it displaced the earlier Old English word casere, which came from Latin Caesar.