empire

(ĕm'pīr')
n.

1. 1. A political unit having an extensive territory or comprising a number of territories or nations and ruled by a single supreme authority.
   2. The territory included in such a unit.
2. An extensive enterprise under a unified authority: a publishing empire.
3. Imperial or imperialistic sovereignty, domination, or control: "There is a growing sense that the course of empire is shifting toward the . . . Asians" (James Traub).

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin imperium, from imperāre, to command. See emperor.]

View more Technology videos

Any of a family of military simulations derived from a game written by Peter Langston many years ago. A number of multi-player variants of varying degrees of sophistication exist, and one single-player version implemented for both Unix and VMS; the latter is even available as MS-DOS/Windows freeware. All are notoriously addictive. Of various commercial derivatives the best known is probably “Empire Deluxe” on PCs and Amigas.

Modern empire is a real-time wargame played over the internet by up to 120 players. Typical games last from 24 hours (blitz) to a couple of months (long term). The amount of sleep you can get while playing is a function of the rate at which updates occur and the number of co-rulers of your country. Empire server software is available for Unix-like machines, and clients for Unix and other platforms. A comprehensive history of the game is available at http://www.empire.cx/infopages/History.html. The Empire resource site is at http://www.empire.cx/.

---

Deriving from the Latin term (imperator) for a supreme military and, later, political leader, empire came to mean a territorial realm over which exclusive authority was exercised by a single sovereign. Thus the preamble of the English Act of Appeals (1533) justified denial of the right of subjects of the Crown to appeal to courts outside the realm or territory of England on the ground (however dubious) ‘that this realm of England is an empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one supreme head and king’.

The term soon came to be applied to the much more loosely controlled and heterogeneous domains of princes such as the Habsburg Emperor Charles V, even when his power was manifestly compromised and limited in many places, and most of all in the so-called Holy Roman Empire from which he derived the title, by the continuing privileges of Church, lesser princes, cities, guilds, electors, and estates. Likewise, Queen Victoria adopted the style of Queen Empress 1877 at precisely the moment when the addition of India and new African dependencies to her dominions led them to resemble the ramshackle constitutional amalgams of her Austrian and Russian cousins more than the older English ideal of a contiguous territory with a homogeneous population. Thereafter, ‘empire’ was generally taken to denote an extensive group of states, whether formed by colonization or conquest, subject to the authority of a metropolitan or imperial state, even when—as in France or the USSR—that dominant state became a republic, lacking an emperor or empress at its head. In this later sense, well established by the early years of the twentieth century, empire became closely associated with imperialism.

— Charles Jones

For a list of words related to empire, see:

• apple
• Forms, Systems, and Philosophies - empire: several territories, nations, or peoples governed by single sovereign authority

---

Dansk (Danish)
n. - imperium, rige, overherredømme, fuldstændig magt, forretningsimperium, empire
adj. - empire-

Nederlands (Dutch)
imperium, keizerrijk, opperheerschappij, stijl uit periodes 1804-1815 of 1851-1870

Français (French)
n. - empire
adj. - d'un empire

Deutsch (German)
n. - Reich, Imperium, Weltreich
adj. - Empire...

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - αυτοκρατορία

Italiano (Italian)
impero

Português (Portuguese)
n. - império (m)

Русский (Russian)
империя, владычество

Español (Spanish)
n. - imperio, reino
adj. - imperio, de estilo imperio

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - imperium, kejsardöme

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
帝国, 帝权, 法兰西第一帝国时代流行的, 产自英联邦的

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 帝國, 帝權
adj. - 法蘭西第一帝國時代流行的, 產自英聯邦的

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 제국, 제왕의 주권, 절대 지배권
adj. - 프랑스 제국식의, 제국주의의

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 帝国, 主権, 皇帝の主権
adj. - 第一帝政様式の

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) امبراطوريه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮קיסרות, אימפריה‬
adj. - ‮מיוצר בחבר-העמים הבריטי‬

If you are unable to view some languages clearly, click here.

To select your translation preferences click here.