empress

noun

em·​press ˈem-prəs 

1

: the wife or widow of an emperor

2

: a woman who is the sovereign or supreme monarch of an empire

Examples of empress in a Sentence

the Emperor and Empress of Japan

Catherine the Great was Empress of Russia.

Recent Examples on the Web

In First Steps, Garner plays Shalla-Bal, the immortal empress of the plant Zenn-La and Norrin’s lover. —Glenn Garner, Deadline, 24 Apr. 2025

The city—ever elegant, ever enigmatic—set the stage for one of the magazine’s most iconic stories: The Last Waltz, Mario Testino’s sweeping September 2006 editorial starring Natalia Vodianova as a modern-day empress gliding through Schönbrunn and beyond. —Lilah Ramzi, Vogue, 24 Apr. 2025

The coins featured the faces of 11 Roman emperors and empresses, including Nero and Marcus Aurelius, according to the University of Oxford’s Coin Hoards of the Roman Empire Project database. —Lauren Liebhaber, Miami Herald, 24 Apr. 2025

If physics is the queen of science, then mathematics is the empress. —Big Think, 16 Jan. 2025

Word History

Etymology

Middle English emperice, emperes (with assimilation of the suffix to -esse -ess), borrowed from Anglo-French emperice, empereis, going back to Late Latin imperātrīc-, imperātrīx (Latin, "female general [used ironically]"), from Latin imperāre "to give orders, exercise authority, hold political power" + -trīc-, -trīx, feminine agent suffix — more at emperor

First Known Use

12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Kids Definition

empress

noun

em·​press ˈem-prəs 

1

: the wife or widow of an emperor

2

: a woman who is the ruler of an empire