# emperor

Pronunciation: US say "EM-puh-rer" /ˈɛmpəɹɚ/; UK say "EM-puh-ruh" /ˈɛmpəɹə/

## Noun

1. The male monarch who rules over an empire.
   - Simple: A man who rules 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._
2. Short for emperor penguin, the Antarctic species Aptenodytes forsteri.
   - Simple: Short for emperor penguin, a kind of penguin that lives in Antarctica.
   - _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._
3. A monarch ruling an empire, whether a man or a woman, where empress is kept to mean an emperor's wife.
   - Simple: Any ruler of an empire, man or woman, while empress means the wife of an emperor.
   - _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._
4. The ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, regarded as the world-monarch.
   - Simple: The ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, seen as the king over the whole world.
   - _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._
5. The tarot card that is the fourth trump of the major arcana.
   - Simple: The fourth of the special picture cards in a tarot deck.
   - _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._
6. Any of various large dragonflies of the genus Anax, which is found throughout the world.
   - Simple: A kind of large dragonfly found in many parts of 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._
7. Any of various butterflies belonging to the subfamily Charaxinae.
   - Simple: Any of a group of related butterflies.
   - _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._
8. Any of the fish that make up the family Lethrinidae.
   - Simple: Any fish that belongs to the family called Lethrinidae.
   - _Divers watched an emperor nose through the sand beside the coral, hunting for crabs._
   - _Reef anglers prize emperors for their firm white flesh._
9. A large marble of relatively high value in children's marble games.
   - Simple: A big marble that is worth more than most in children's 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._

## 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.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/emperor (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).