empire

empire

1. an aggregate of peoples and territories, often of great extent, under the rule of a single person, oligarchy, or sovereign state

2. any monarchy that for reasons of history, prestige, etc., has an emperor rather than a king as head of state

3. the period during which a particular empire exists

4. supreme power; sovereignty

5. a large industrial organization with many ramifications, esp a multinational corporation

Empire

 

(1) The name for a monarchical state headed by an emperor. An empire is most often a vast state that has incorporated, usually by conquest, the territory of other peoples and states. Some empires included several kingdoms. The Roman state was called an empire after Augustus established the individual power of the emperor in the late first century B.C. Later empires included Byzantium; the Frankish state under Charlemagne, who adopted the title of emperor in 800; and the medieval Holy Roman Empire. Tsarist Russia was an empire from the time of Peter I (1721) until the overthrow of the monarchy in 1917. Other examples of empires are bourgeois France under Napoleon I (the First Empire) and Napoleon III (the Second Empire), Austria from 1804 (Austria-Hungary from 1868) until 1918, and Germany from 1871 until the revolution of 1918.

(2) Large states that have vast colonial possessions. The empire consists of the mother country and its colonies—for example, the British empire included Great Britain and all of its dominions and colonies.

empire

(games)

Any of a family of military simulations derived from a game written by Peter Langston many years ago. Five or six 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 freeware. All are notoriously addictive.