Recent Examples on the WebThe government was run by a chancellor who reported to a hereditary monarch, the kaiser, rather than to the public at large, and there were two legislative houses, an upper one dominated by Prussian conservatives and a lower one elected by universal suffrage.—Sheri Berman, Foreign Affairs, 3 Dec. 2012 Starting at the turn of the previous century, Heilbrunn showcases the myriad ways in which influential conservatives, including many prominent Republicans, fawned over strongmen like the German kaiser and various Cold War-era juntas.—Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 8 Mar. 2024 Von Tirpitz was appointed state secretary of the Imperial Naval Office in 1897 under Emperor Wilhelm II, the last kaiser of Germany and the final member of the House of Hohenzollern to be king of Prussia.—Chelsia Rose Marcius, New York Times, 28 Sep. 2023 The bizarre tale of a kidnapping attempt, the German kaiser and a beloved ashtray
Bejerot, the consulting psychiatrist, is credited with coining Stockholm syndrome that year to describe the phenomenon of captives developing emotional bonds with their captors.—Donald Beaulieu, Washington Post, 23 Aug. 2023 Thereafter, Germany became the kaiser writ large, the nation’s aspirations an outgrowth of the kaiser’s insecurities.—Washington Post, 7 Jan. 2022 The bakery was out of cinnamon rolls, and Jacob arrived with ordinary kaisers, which neither of them liked.—Cynthia Ozick, Harper’s Magazine , 10 Apr. 2023 If a totalitarian regime forcibly occupied TSMC, in other words, its kaiser would never get its partner democracies on the phone.—Virginia Heffernan, WIRED, 21 Mar. 2023 Think of the kaiser and World War I, the Tojo regime leading into World War II, Kim Il Sung in Korea, the Soviets in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein against Iran and Kuwait.—Michael O’Hanlon, WSJ, 9 Mar. 2022
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'kaiser.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Etymology
Middle English, from Old Norse keisari; akin to Old High German keisur emperor; both from a prehistoric Germanic word borrowed from Latin Caesar, cognomen of the Emperor Augustus
Middle English caisere "emperor," from Old Norse keisari, derived from a Germanic word kaisar "emperor," derived from Latin Caesar (title of a line of Roman emperors after Caesar Augustus) see Word History at emperor
Share