EMPIRE

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An eating apple that somewhat resembles a McIntosh; used as both an eating and a cooking apple

Classified under:

Nouns denoting foods and drinks

Hypernyms ("Empire" is a kind of...):

dessert apple; eating apple (an apple used primarily for eating raw without cooking)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A group of countries under a single authority

Example:

the British created a great empire

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Hypernyms ("empire" is a kind of...):

authorities; government; regime (the organization that is the governing authority of a political unit)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A group of diverse companies under common ownership and run as a single organization

Synonyms:

conglomerate; empire

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Hypernyms ("empire" is a kind of...):

corp; corporation (a business firm whose articles of incorporation have been approved in some state)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "empire"):

publishing conglomerate; publishing empire (a conglomerate of publishing companies)

Sense 4

Meaning:

A monarchy with an emperor as head of state

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Hypernyms ("empire" is a kind of...):

monarchy (an autocracy governed by a monarch who usually inherits the authority)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "empire"):

Mogul empire (an empire established by the Mogul conquerors of India that reigned from 1526 to 1857)

Second Empire (the imperial government of Napoleon III in France from 1852-1870)

Derivation:

imperial (relating to or associated with an empire)

Sense 5

Meaning:

The domain ruled by an emperor or empress; the region over which imperial dominion is exercised

Synonyms:

empire; imperium

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Hypernyms ("empire" is a kind of...):

demesne; domain; land (territory over which rule or control is exercised)

Instance hyponyms:

Roman Empire (an empire established by Augustus in 27 BC and divided in AD 395 into the Western Roman Empire and the eastern or Byzantine Empire; at its peak lands in Europe and Africa and Asia were ruled by ancient Rome)

Egypt; Egyptian Empire (an ancient empire to the west of Israel; centered on the Nile River and ruled by a Pharaoh; figured in many events described in the Old Testament)

Persia; Persian Empire (an empire in southern Asia created by Cyrus the Great in the 6th century BC and destroyed by Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC)

Russia (a former empire in eastern Europe and northern Asia created in the 14th century with Moscow as the capital; powerful in the 17th and 18th centuries under Peter the Great and Catherine the Great when Saint Petersburg was the capital; overthrown by revolution in 1917)

Ottoman Empire; Turkish Empire (a Turkish sultanate of southwestern Asia and northeastern Africa and southeastern Europe; created by the Ottoman Turks in the 13th century and lasted until the end of World War I; although initially small it expanded until it superseded the Byzantine Empire)

Derivation:

imperial (befitting or belonging to an emperor or empress)

Credits

Context examples:

Had I approached my discovery in a more noble spirit, had I risked the experiment while under the empire of generous or pious aspirations, all must have been otherwise, and from these agonies of death and birth, I had come forth an angel instead of a fiend.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Then he would pass through the land of the Almains and the great Roman Empire, and so to the country of the Huns and of the Lithuanian pagans, beyond which lies the great city of Constantine and the kingdom of the unclean followers of Mahmoud.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The empire of Blefuscu is an island situated to the north-east of Lilliput, from which it is parted only by a channel of eight hundred yards wide.