shogun
or shō·gun
[shoh-guh n, -guhn]
- the title applied to the chief military commanders from about the 8th century a.d. to the end of the 12th century, then applied to the hereditary officials who governed Japan, with the emperor as nominal ruler, until 1868, when the shogunate was terminated and the ruling power was returned to the emperor.
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Origin of shogun
1605–15; < Japanese shōgun, earlier shaũgun < Middle Chinese, equivalent, to Chinese jiāngjūn literally, lead the army
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for shoguns
Historical Examples
Six Shoguns, members of the Tokugawa family, lie buried at Ueno.
Travels in the Far EastEllen Mary Hayes Peck
At Uyéno is the second of the burial-grounds of the Shoguns.
Tales of Old JapanAlgernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
See note on the tombs of the Shoguns, at the end of the story.
Tales of Old JapanAlgernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
This question I asked the guide, who plunged me in a tangle of Daimios and Shoguns, all manifestly extracted from a guide-book.
From Sea to SeaRudyard Kipling
After the battle of Fushimi, and the abolition of the Shogunate, he accompanied the last of the Shoguns in his retirement.
Tales of Old JapanAlgernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
shogun
- (from 794 ad) a chief military commander
- (from about 1192 to 1867) any of a line of hereditary military dictators who relegated the emperors to a position of purely theoretical supremacy
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Word Origin
C17: from Japanese, from Chinese chiang chün general, from chiang to lead + chün army
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Word Origin and History for shoguns
shogun
n.
1610s, "hereditary commander of a Japanese army," from Japanese (sei-i-tai) shogun "(barbarian-subduing) chief" (late 12c.), sound-substitution for Chinese chiang chiin, literally "lead army."
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
shoguns
[(shoh-guhnz)]
Japanese military leaders who ruled the country from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries. There was still an emperor in Japan under the shoguns, but he was reduced to a mere figurehead.
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The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.