czar
noun
- an emperor: title of any of the former emperors of Russia and, at various times, the sovereigns of other Slavic nations
- ☆ any person having great or unlimited power; autocrat: the President's energy czar
See czar in American Heritage Dictionary 4
czar
noun- also tsar or tzar A male monarch or emperor, especially one of the emperors who ruled Russia until the revolution of 1917.
- A person having great power; an autocrat: “the square-jawed, ruddy complacency of Jack Farrell, the czar of the Fifteenth Street police station” (Ernest Hemingway).
- Informal An appointed official having special powers to regulate or supervise an activity: a racetrack czar; an energy czar.
Origin: Russian tsar', from Old Russian tsĭsarĭ, emperor, king, from Old Church Slavonic tsěsarĭ, from Gothic kaisar, from Greek, from Latin Caesar, emperor; see Caesar .
Related Forms:
Usage Note: The word
czar can also be spelled
tsar. Czar is the most common form in American usage and the one nearly always employed in the extended senses “any tyrant” or informally, “one in authority.” But
tsar is preferred by most scholars of Slavic studies as a more accurate transliteration of the Russian and is often found in scholarly writing with reference to one of the Russian emperors.
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