Obscure Words: An Ongoing Series, If I Don't Forget or Get Bored

I was reading through L. M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle tonight—a book I mentioned on the second stage of my bookshelf tour—and came across the following passage:

Some nights the whole outer world seemed to be given over to the empery of silence; then came nights when there would be a majestic sweep of wind in the pines; nights of dear starlight when it whistled freakishly and joyously round the Blue Castle; brooding nights before storm when it crept along the floor of the lake with a low wailing cry of boding and mystery. (Angus and Robertson, 1980. 241)

Now, I’m not saying that’s the best prose in the world: in fact, I think “dear starlight,” at least, is a horrific phrase, hatefully twee.

But what struck me was “empery.” I’ve never consciously seen the word “empery” before—and I’ve read this book before.

(My spellchecker hasn’t seen it, either—but then my spellchecker also isn’t familiar with the word “twee,” which just proves that it’s never watched Eurovision.)

So I looked it up.

It wasn’t in my Concise OED, and I don’t think that’s because at home I have to settle for The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary, my copy of the Concise OED itself now living permanently in my office at work.

So I looked it up in the online OED, which tells me that it is both a verb and a noun.

As a verb, it has, apparently, only one definition and only one citation: listed as “obscure, rare” intransitive verb, it means “to exercise supreme power; to lord it.” For support, the OED cites a quotation from Arnolde, 1502: “Alsoo emp’ryng vpon ful many cristen lordis.”

But I’m not sure we’re talking about a verb here.

And the noun has a much longer entry.

The noun, the OED tells me, is now only poetical or rhetorical; that makes me feel a little better about never hearing the word before.

First and foremost, it means “the status, dignity, or dominion of an emperor,” an obsolete usage. Here, the OED offers me citations ranging from one dated 1297 (which includes archaic characters that I’m fairly sure my computer won’t reproduce without effort) to, of course, Shakespeare, from Titus Andronicus (1588, I. i. 201): “Thou shalt obtaine and aske the Emperie.”

But as a subset of this definition, the OED offers “In wider sense: Absolute dominion.” And here the citations run from Udall in 1548—“Ryches, honoure and emperye”—to my old favourite George Macdonald in 1882—“A wider love of empery.”

And as a second subset of the same definition, we have “In the sense of L. imperium: The authority with which an officer or magistrate has been lawfully invested; legitimate government,” also an obsolete usage. Here, the citations range from Chaucer in c.1374 to Bridge in 1642: “If a Prince should [. . .] change the form of the Common-weale from Empery to Tyranny.”

But it wouldn’t be the OED if there weren’t a set of secondary definitions:

2. a. The territory ruled by an emperor. b. In wider sense: The territory of an absolute or powerful ruler.

2a is listed as “also figurative”: does that mean the first is purely literal?

For these secondary definitions, there are citations ranging from Coke in 1550—“Constantyne [. . .] conquered the whole empery”—to Keats’s “Lamia” (1820)—“A want Of something more, more than her empery Of joys (ii.36)—to Hartley Coleridge’s Poems (1833)—”‘Tis all thy own, ‘tis all thy empery.”

Which of these relates to Montgomery’s use?

No idea: I distracted myself.

But isn’t it interesting?