imperial
Noun pluralimperials
Pluralimperials
- 1Belonging to or connected with an empire, or with an emperor or empress.
The imperial court moved to the summer palace each July.
Under imperial rule, the provinces paid heavy taxes to the capital.
Note
Command sits at the root of the word: through Old French it comes from Latin imperiālis, built on imperium, "empire", and ultimately on imperō, "to command". It pushed out an Old English word, cāserlīċ, and was well at home when Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus (c. 1588–1593) spoke of "the imperial diadem of Rome." It usually stands before its noun: imperial court, imperial rule.
- 2Relating to the British imperial system of weights and measures, with units such as the pound.
Many older British cookbooks list ingredients in imperial measures.
The engineer converted the imperial figures on the old blueprints into metric.
Oppositemetric
- 3Very grand or fine, with an air of great splendor.
The new opera house, with its marble staircase and gilded ceilings, has a truly imperial grandeur.
The banquet was an imperial affair, with twelve courses and a string orchestra.
Similarmajestic, magnificent, regal, grand, splendid
- 4Stronger than the typical version of its kind, especially of a beer or other alcoholic drink.
The brewery's imperial pilsner has nearly twice the alcohol of its standard pilsner.
Some craft brewers now make imperial versions of many styles, from porter to mead.
Note
Brewers took the word from a single beer, Russian Imperial stout, a strong dark brew, and now set it before other styles to mark a stronger version: Imperial IPA, Imperial pilsner, even Imperial mead. In these style names it is often capitalized, and it comes first, as part of the name rather than as a description added afterward.
- 5A small tuft of beard grown on the lower lip, so called because Napoleon III wore one.
In the old photograph, the general sports a waxed mustache and a pointed imperial.
His barber trimmed the imperial into a neat point beneath his lip.
Similarroyal
- 6A large wine bottle, usually of Bordeaux, that holds 6 liters, eight times as much as a standard bottle.
The auction's top lot was an imperial of 1982 Bordeaux.
The cellar held a few magnums and two dusty imperials.
- 7A paper size measuring 30 by 22 inches for writing paper or 32 by 22 inches for printing paper.
Many watercolor painters buy their paper by the full sheet of imperial and cut it down.
The printer quoted a price for five hundred sheets of imperial for the new catalog.
Note
One of the old paper sizes known by a name rather than by a number in a series, and a name that covered two cuts, with printing paper two inches longer than writing paper. Artists and printers who buy paper by the full sheet still use it, often uncountably: a sheet of imperial, five hundred sheets of imperial.
- 8A particular variety of green tea.
The tea merchant weighed out a quarter pound of imperial and a quarter pound of black tea.
Steep the imperial for only two minutes, or the green leaves will turn bitter.
- 9A crown imperial, a tall flowering plant.
Each spring the tall imperial by the garden gate bursts into bloom.
The nursery sold out of potted imperials within a week.
Note
A plant name trimmed to its second word, and an old trimming: John Freeman Milward Dovaston's "The Sonnet" (1816) complains that the form crowds a poet's flowers "like pots of tall imperials, ill at ease." The image depends on the plant's height, tall stems cramped into pots as a poet's thoughts are fettered by the sonnet's rules. The plural is the regular imperials.
- 10A card game much like piquet, differing from it in a few minor details and in having a trump suit.
Players who know piquet can pick up imperial in an afternoon, since the trump is the main new rule.
After dinner the two old friends settled down to a game of imperial.
Note
A game for anyone who already knows piquet: the rules run close, and the trump is the main difference. As the name of the game it takes no article and no plural, so people play imperial or sit down to a game of imperial, while the scoring combinations are counted like ordinary nouns.
- 11Any of several scoring combinations of cards in the card game imperial.
Declaring an imperial early in the hand put her well ahead.
By the end of the deal he had shown three imperials and doubled his score.
- 12A seat on the roof or outside of a carriage, such as a diligence or other stagecoach.
Passengers on the imperial were exposed to the dust and rain of the open road.
She bought a place on the imperial of the evening diligence to Lyon.
Note
A word from the age of coach travel, when some passengers rode up top. Because the trunk strapped to the roof was also called an imperial, the roof trunk, older novels can leave the reader to decide: when Letitia Elizabeth Landon's Romance and Reality (1831) notes that "a large imperial was on the top" of a departing carriage, only the context says seat or baggage.
- 13A trunk or suitcase designed to travel on the roof of a carriage.
The footman hoisted the heavy imperial onto the carriage roof and strapped it down.
[T]he imperials were packed, and the post-chariot was at the door.
1818, Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare AbbeyNote
Trunks of this kind were packed like any other luggage and then hoisted up top: in Thomas Love Peacock's Nightmare Abbey (1818), "the imperials were packed, and the post-chariot was at the door." The word went out of use with the carriages it rode on, so a modern reader meets it in novels of that period or in a description of an antique.
- 14Larger or better than the usual kind; of special size or superior quality.
- 15A type of dome, such as those found on Moorish buildings.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English imperial, from Old French imperial, from Latin imperiālis (“of the empire or emperor, imperial”), formed from imperium (“empire, imperial government”) + -ālis. Imperium comes from imperō (“command, order”), from im- (“in”) + parō (“prepare, arrange”). The word displaced Old English cāserlīċ.