Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The woman ruler of an empire.
  • noun The wife or widow of an emperor.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A woman who rules over an empire; a woman invested with imperial power or sovereignty.
  • noun The wife or the widow of an emperor: in the latter case called specifically empress dowager.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The consort of an emperor.
  • noun A female sovereign.
  • noun A sovereign mistress.
  • noun a cloth for ladies' dresses, either wholly of wool, or with cotton warp and wool weft. It resembles merino, but is not twilled.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The female monarch (ruler) of an empire.
  • noun The wife or widow of an emperor or equated ruler (e.g. Persian shah).
  • verb Alternative form of impress.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a woman emperor or the wife of an emperor

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English emperesse, from Old French, feminine of empereor, emperor; see emperor.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

emperor +‎ -ess

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word empress.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.