empire 
Your Maiestie (my most gnu-Ions Hnueralgne) h:iue 
Hhi-wi-d your selfe to all tin- world, for this one and thirty 
MMM^Menf your glorious raliine, aboueallother I' 
of Ohristendome, not um-lv fortunate, but also most, suf- 
ficient vcrtuoua and worthy of Km/iire. 
r<ilr>',ilun, Artc of Kllg. I'iK-si'-, !' : 
He here stalks 
Upon the heads of Romans, and their prlm-i--. 
Familiarly to empire. B.Jonson, Hejanus, Iv. 3. 
Westward the course of empire takes its way. 
Dp. Berkeley, Arts and Learning in America. 
If we do our duties as honestly and as much in the fear 
nf i;,>d iis our forefathers did, we need not trouble our- 
M-UI-S much about other titles to .-^/.ire. 
Lowell, Among my Books, 1st scr., p. 244. 
2. The country, region, or union of states or 
territories under the jurisdiction and dominion 
of an emperor or other powerful sovereign or 
government ; usually, a territory of greater ex- 
tent than a kingdom, which may be, and often 
is, of small extent: as, the Roman or the Rus- 
sian empire. The designation empire has been assumed 
in modern times by some small or homogeneous mon- 
archies, generally ephemeral ; but properly an empire 
is an aggregate of conquered, colonized, or confederated 
states, each with its own government subordinate or tribu- 
tary to that of the empire as a whole. Such were and are 
all the great historical empires ; and in this sense the name 
is applied appropriately to any large aggregation of sepa- 
rate territories under one monarch, whatever his title may 
be : as, the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian empire*; 
the empire of Alexander the Great; the British empire, 
etc. See emperui; and Holy Itoman Empire, below. 
3. Supreme control; governing influence; rule; 
sway : as, the empire of reason or of truth. 
We disdain 
To do those servile offices, ofttimes 
His foolish pride and empire will exact. 
B. Joiisun, Magnotick Lady, lil. 4. 
The sword turns preacher, and dictates propositions by 
empire Instead of arguments. 
Jer. Taylor, Works (ed. 1835), I. 690. 
It is to the very end of our days a struggle between our 
reason and our temper, which shall have the empire over 
us. Steele, Taller, No. 172. 
Circle of the empire. Sec circle. Eastern Empire, or 
Empire of the East, originally, that division of the Ro- 
man empire which hail its seat in Constantinople. Its final 
separation from the Western Empire dates from the death 
of Theodosius the llreat (A. 1). 395), whose sons Arcadius 
and Honorius received respectively the eastern and west- 
ern divisions of the Roman dominion. After the fall of 
the Western Empire, the Empire of the East is commonly 
known as the Byzantine empire. It continued until the 
capture of Constantinople by the Turks In 1453. Empire 
City, the city of New York : so called as being the chief 
city of the Empire State, and the commercial metropolis 
of the United States. Empire State, the State of New 
York: so called from its superior population and wealth 
as compared with the other States of the Union. Holy 
Roman Empire, the German-Roman empire in western 
and central Europe (in later times commonly styled the 
German empire), which, after a lapse of more than three 
hundred years, reunited a large portion of the territories 
formerly belonging to the Western Empire. The union of 
the German royal and Roman imperial crowns began with 
Charles the Great or Charlemagne, king of the Franks, who 
was crowned emperor by the 1'ope at Rome A. D. 800 : but 
the line of German kings who were at the same time Holy 
Koman emperors begins properly with Otho the Great, 
crowned emperor in 982. The empire was regarded as the 
temporal form of a theoretically universal dominion, whose 
spiritual head was the Pope and the earlier emperors were 
crowned at Rome by the spiritual rulers of Christendom. 
Tlie empire continued under monarchs of the Saxon, Fran- 
conlau, and Hohenstaufen dynasties, passing in 1273 to the 
Austrian house of Hapsburg, the members of which line 
remained in uninterrupted possession of the empire from 
1438 until its final extinction in 1806. It had long pre- 
viously lost the greater part of the external territories 
which had entitled it to lie called Roman; and its final 
dissolution was due to the conquests and encroachments 
of Napoleon I. (Seem^eror.) The emperors were elected 
by certain of the more powerful German princes called 
electors, whose number was definitely fixed at seven by the 
Golden Bull of 1356. and remained nt that number with but 
slight changes. The Celestial Empire. See celestial. 
Western Empire, the distinctive designation of the 
western portion of the Roman world after its division into 
two independent empires in A. I>. 395. (See Eastern Em- 
pire, alx>ve.) Its power very rapidly declined under the 
inroads of barbarians and other adverse influences, and it 
wai finally extinguished in A. n. 47(1. =8yn. 1. Sway, do- 
minion, rule, reign, government, supremacy, 
empirema (em-pi-re'ma), n. ; pi. empiremata 
(-ma-ta). [NL., < Gr. as if *e/iircip>ifta, < e/mFt- 
peiv, be experienced in, < cimrtpor,, experienced : 
see empiric.] In logic, a proposition grounded 
upon experience. Also spelled empeirema. 
empireship (em'pir-ship), w. The power, sover- 
eignty, or dominion of an empire. 
England has seized the empirexhip of India. 
Library Mag., July, 1886. 
empiric (om-pir'ik), a. and n. [Formerly em- 
pirick; < OF. empiriqwe, F. empire/lie = Sp. em- 
l>ir!m = Pg. It. cmpirico (cf. D. G. cmpirisch = 
Dan. Sw. empirisk), < L. cmpiriciis. < Gr. ifiv&pi- 
KOC, experienced (oj '!-' :i~:h*n*<>i, the Empirics : 
see II., 1), < fU77f(/. experience, mere experi- 
ence or practice without knowledge, esp. in 
medicine, empiricism, < ipireipps, experienced 
or practised in, < tr, in, + irelpa, a trial, ex- 
periment, attempt ; akin to Tnioof , a way, < *Trp, 
1 903 
van = E. fare, go.] I. n. 1. Same as empiri- 
calf-2. Versed e i,, J phy 8 ical experimentation: 
as, an empiric alchemist. 3. Of or pertaining 
to the medical empirics. 
Itis accounted an error to commit a natural body to em- 
piri,- physicians. Bacon, Advancement of Learning, i. 17. 
. 
n. nl. [cap.1 One of an ancient sect of 
Greek physicians who maintained that practice 
or experience, and not theory, is the foundation 
of the science of medicine. 
m;f Vocalh'of Philos. (ed. Krauth), p. 157. 
emplaster 
He [Radcliffel knew. It is true, that experience, the 
safest guide after the mind U prepared for her instruc- 
tions by previous institution, i-. apt. without such prepa- 
ration, to degenerate to a vulgar and presumptuous em- 
piricim. V. Knox, Ennays, xxxvlii. 
At present, lie (Bacon) reflected, some were content to 
rest in empiricism and Isolated fact*; others ascended 
too hastily to first principles. K. A. Abbott, Bacon, p. 344. 
What is called empiricinn is the application of super- 
ficial truths, recognized in a loose, unsystematic way, to 
immediate and special needs. 
L. f. Ward, Iiymim. Soclol., II. 203. 
2. In med., the practice of empirics; hence, 
quackery; the pretension of an ignorant per- 
son to medical skill. 
Shudder to destroy life, either by the naked knife or 
by the surer and safer medium of empiricism. Dmyht. 
It is not safe for the Church of Christ when bishops 
learn what belongeth unto government, as empirics learn 
physic, by killing of the sick. Hooter, Eccles. Polity, vii. 24. 
This is the cause why empirics and old women are more 
happy many times in their cures than learned physicians, 
because they are more religlousin holding their medicines. 
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, 11. 108. 
There are many empirieki In the world who pretend to 
infallible methods of curing all patients. 
Bp. Atterbury, Sermons, II. viii. 
Empirickt and mountebanks. 
Snaftesbury, Advice to an Author, II. i 2. 
3. In general, one who depends mainly upon 
experience or intuition; one whose procedure 
in any field of action or inquiry is too exclu- 
sively empirical. 
The empiric, . . . Instead of ascending from sense to 
Intellect (the natural progress of all true learning), . . . 
hurries, on the contrary. Into the midst of sense, where he 
wanders at random without any end, and is lost in a laby- 
rinth of infinite particulars. Harris, Hermes, Iv. 
Vague generalisations may form the stock-in-trade of 
the political empiric, but he Is an empiric notwithstand- 
ing. Stubbs, Medieval and Modern Hist., p. 81. 
= Syn. 2. Mountebank, etc. See H<I<*, n. 
empirical (em-pir'i-kal), a. [< empiric + -a/.] 
1. Pertaining to or derived from experience or 
experiments ; depending upon or derived from 
the observation of phenomena. 
In philosophical language the term empirical means sim- 
ply what belongs to or is the product of experience or ob- 
servation. Sir 1C. Hamilton. 
Now here again we may observe the error into which 
Locke was led by confounding the cause of our ideas with 
their occasion. There can be no idea, lie argues, prior to 
experience ; granted. Therefore he concludes the mind 
previous to it is, as it were, a tabula rasa, owing every 
notion which it gains primarily to an empirical source. 
J. D. Morell. 
The empirical generalization that guides the farmer in 
his rotation of crops serves to bring hi* actions into con- 
cord with certain of the actions going on in plants and 
soil. //. Spencer, Prin. of Biol., 28. 
2. Derived, as a general proposition, from a 
narrow range of observation, without any war- 
rant for its exactitude or for its wider validity. 
The empirical diagram only represents the relative num- 
ber and position of the parts, just as a careful observation 
shows them in the flower; but if the diagram also Indi- 
cates the places where members are suppressed, ... I 
call it a theoretical diagram. 
Sachs, Botany (trans.), p. 525. 
It is not at all Impossible that Heory II. may have len 
The terms Empiricism, Empiricist, Empirical, although 
commonly employed by metaphysicians with contempt 
to mark a mode of Investigation which admit-, no higher 
source than experience (by them often unwarrantably 
restricted to Sensation), may Iw accepted without demur, 
since even the flavor of contempt only serves to empha- 
size the distinction. 
G. U. Leices, Probs. of Life and Mind, I. II. 1 14. 
. 
" 5 one who regards sensuous experience as 
the sole source of all ideas and knowledge. 
. The object must be supplied from without, 
and he supplied It provisionally by the name of God. 
JV. A. lien., CXX. 409. 
The empiricist can take no cognizance of anything that 
transcends experience. Xcuj I'rincetun Ret., II. 169. 
2. A medical empiric. 
empirictict, empiricutict (em-pi-rik'tik, em- 
pir-i-ku'tik), a, [An unmeaning extension of 
empiric.] Empirical. 
The most sovereign prescription In Galen is but enipiri- 
cnlick. Shak., COT., li. 1. 
ompirism (em'pi-rizm), . [= F. cmpirisnic = 
Sp. Pg. It. empirismo = D. Dan. cmpirisnic = 
Sw. cmpirism, < NL. 'empirixmtis, < Gr. Ifimi- 
poc,, experienced: see empiric.] Empiricism. 
[Rare.] 
It is to this sense [second muscular], mainly, that we 
owe the conception of force, the origin of which empiritm 
could never otherwise explain. 
G. S. Hall, German Culture, p. 219. 
empiristic (em-pi-ris'tik), a. Of or pertaining 
to empiricism or to the empiricists; empirical. 
[Rare.] 
The empiristic view which Helmholtz defends Is that 
the space-determinations we perceive are in every case 
products of a process of unconscious Inference. 
r . James, Mind, XII. 645. 
Empis (em'pis), n. [NL. (Linnteus, 1767), < 
Gr. f/iir/c (i/urtiS-), a mosquito, gnat, larva of the 
gadfly; cf. Apis 1 .] The typical genus of the 
family Empiace. 
emplace (em-plas'), r. t. ; met. and pp. cm- 
placed, ppr. cmplacmg. [< OF. cmplacier, place, 
employ, < en- + placer, place: see place.] To 
place; locate. [Rare.] 
They (Iranlc building*] were emplaced on terraces form- 
ed of vast blocks of hewn stone, and were approached by 
Stubbs, Medieval and Modem Hist., p. 303. 
3. Pertaining to the medical practice of an 
empiric, in either of the medical senses of that 
word ; hence, charlatanical ; quackish. 
The mjriricaf treatment he submitted to . . . hastened 
his end. Goldsmith, Bollngbrokc. 
Empirical certainty, cognition, ego, idealism, etc. 
which sufficiently satisfies certain observations, but which 
is not supported by any established theory or probable 
hypothesis, so that it cannot be relied upon far beyond 
the conditions of the observations upon which it rests. 
Thus, the formula of Dulong and Petit expressing the re- 
lation between the temperature of a body and its radia- 
tive power cannot be extended to the calculation of the 
heat of the sun, since there is no reason for supj>osing 
that it would approximate to the truth so far beyond the 
temperatures ut uliirh the experiments were made. 
empirically (em-pir'i-kal-i), adv. In an em- 
pirical manner; by experiment; according to 
experience; without science; in the manner 
of quacks. 
Every science logins by accumulating observations, and 
presently generalizes these empiricattii. 
II. Spencer, Data of Ethics, 22. 
empiricism (em-pir'i-sizm), n. [< empiric + 
-inm. See empiric.] 1. The character of being 
empirical : reliance on direct experience and 
observation rather than on theory; empirical 
method; especially, an undue reliance upon 
mere individual cx'perience. 
(.'. Rairlinton, Origin of Nations, I. 101. 
emplacement (em-plas'ment), n. [< F. emplacc- 
iiicnt,<OF.emplacier,p\a.cc: see emplace.] 1. 
A placing or fixing in place; location. [Rare.] 
But till recently it was Impossible to give to V'z any 
more definite emplacement. 
G. natrlimmn, Origin of Nations, II. 241. 
2. Place or site. Specifically, in fort.: (a) The space 
within a fortification allotted for the position and service 
of a gun or battery. 
The emplacements should be connected with each other 
and with the barracks by screened roads. 
Xattire, XXXVI. 36. 
((.) The platform or bed prepared for a gun and its carriage, 
emplastert (em-plas'ter), n. [< ME. enplastre, 
< OF. cmplastre, F. empMtre = Pr. emplastrc = 
Sp. cmplasto = Pg. emjiUutro = It. empiastro, 
impiastro, < L. emplaslrtim, a plaster, also, in 
horticulture, the band of bark which surrounds 
the eye in ingrafting, the scutcheon, < Gr. fp- 
-"/.artTpov (also Itixlacrrpof) and Ifm'faarav, with 
or without Qa(>iiaKm\ a plaster or salve, neut. 
of ffiirZaaroc,, daubed on or over, < ifiir'r.&aativ, 
plaster up, stuff in, < iv, in, + irtaooeiv, form, 
mold. Abbr. plaster, q. v.] A plaster. 
piaitten. /; i, on learning, IT. 2. 
A1J emvlaiters applied to the breasts ought to have a 
hole for Uie nipples. Wixman, Surgery. 
