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

While government ministers tried to turn Russia into a constitutional monarchy, Rasputin offered spiritual guidance to the czar and empress.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 17, 2026

In a rare interview, his mother, the former empress Farah Pahlavi told AFP from her home in Paris in written answers to questions there was "no turning back" after the wave of protests.

From Barron's ● Jan. 21, 2026

She credits much of her fearlessness as a performer to her time spent on the Hulu series “The Great,” on which she played a fictionalized version of Russian empress Catherine the Great.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 17, 2024

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

I’ve seen the imperial family several times, the emperor an ugly, hard-looking man, the empress pale and pretty, but dressed in bad taste, I thought—purple dress, green hat, and yellow gloves.

From "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott

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

For a long while in history, the women cheered in Canyon Of Heroes parades tended to be queens or princesses or empresses.

From Washington Post ● Jul. 8, 2019

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

Many suspected foul play, but certain it is that the outcome inured to the advantage of the two empresses.

From Oriental Women by Pollard, Edward Bagby