empress

American  

[em-pris] / ˈɛm prɪs /

noun

• empresses
  plural

1. a female ruler of an empire.

2. the consort of an emperor.

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empress British  

/ ˈɛmprɪs /

noun

1. the wife or widow of an emperor

2. a woman who holds the rank of emperor in her own right

3. a woman of great power and influence

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Gender

See -ess.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• empresses
  plural

Etymology

Origin of empress

1125–75; Middle English emperice, emperesse < Anglo-French; Old French emperesse, empereriz < Latin imperātrīcem, accusative of imperātrix, feminine of imperātor. See emperor, -trix

Explanation

An empress is either a female emporer or the wife of an emporer. Either way, it's a powerful woman. There are a lot of words that have gender built into them, like fireman and waitress. Another is empress, which is a female emperor. An emperor is like a king: a person with absolute power over a country. An empress is therefore like a queen. Also, just as a queen is the wife of a king, an empress might be the wife of an emperor, meaning she's not the ruler of the country but just married to the ruler.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

empress empresses

“Russia and Western Europe converged” under the empress, at least for a short while.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 17, 2026

The former empress was driven into exile with her husband, late pro-Western shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in January 1979 during a popular revolution that ousted the monarchy and brought the Islamic republic to power.

From Barron's ● Mar. 3, 2026

I had done so many things, but people probably knew me most for “Maleficent,” but it was then fun to be in “The Great” and I’m playing an empress, but she’s not the Disney version.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 26, 2026

Her climb from lifestyle author to homemaking empress, along with her fall and brief imprisonment, spawned endless special reports, gossip columns, parodies, and unauthorized biographies both serious and salacious.

From Salon ● Oct. 30, 2024

The advice that rankled most came from Ward McAllister, factotum and chief slipperlick to Mrs. William Astor, empress of New York society.

From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson

Recording from his home in Pasadena, he has played men and women of all ages, races, nationalities and abilities, as well as “postapocalyptic people living in trees and empresses of fictitious planets,” he notes.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 23, 2025

The organisation has close ties with the imperial family, with previous empresses serving as honorary presidents.

From BBC ● Jan. 23, 2024

I postponed my research on Sims, believing him to be an altruistic outlier who could be a balm in my distressing work: someone who, according to one statue’s inscription, treated “alike empresses and slaves”.

From Nature ● Sep. 17, 2017

As explained earlier, a few empresses wielded great power.

From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2012

Are we not nightly persuaded, as they daily are, that we associate preposterously with kings and queens, emperors and empresses, and notabilities of all sorts?

From A Century of English Essays An Anthology Ranging from Caxton to R. L. Stevenson & the Writers of Our Own Time by Ernest Rhys