What a Waist, that Empire

[a. F. empire:—L. imperium in same sense; related to imperQre to command, whence imperQtor emperor. Owing partly to historical circumstances, and partly to the sense of the etymological connexion between the two words, empire has always had the specific sense ‘rule or territory of an emperor’ as well as the wider meaning which it derives from its etymology.]

1. Supreme and extensive political dominion; esp. that exercised by an ‘emperor’ (in the earlier senses: see emperor 1, 2), or by a sovereign state over its dependencies.
How every man likes to feel in his own house, right? Master of his domain?
5. a. An extensive territory (esp. an aggregate of many separate states) under the sway of an emperor or supreme ruler; also, an aggregate of subject territories ruled over by a sovereign state.
The sun never set on the British Empire for a while... always thought that was kind of cool.
b. the Empire: (a) before 1804 (and subsequently in Hist. use) often spec. the ‘Holy Roman’ or ‘Romano-Germanic’ empire. (b) Great Britain with its dominions, colonies, and dependencies; the British Empire; freq. the overseas dominions, etc., as opposed to Great Britain. Since the Statute of Westminster (1931), Commonwealth has become the more usual term.
(c) the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte as Emperor of the French, 1804–15, or the period of this. (d) the rule of Napoleon III as Emperor of the French, 1852–70, or the period of this, usually as Second Empire.

Every dog has his day, someone once said of the various Boney's that sifted through the French government. These few definitions are intriguing in that, though they refer to the same word (and in some cases co-exist at the same time, i.e. Napoleons and Brits, they can be used and understood in context to mean a specific and historically significant empire. Imagine, if you will, the word being bandied about on two ships, maybe half-mile from one another in a fog, one crew singing La Marseilles, the other singing "God Save the King."
b. Applied to styles of clothing (esp. a dress with a high waistline), furniture, etc., characteristic of the period of the French Empire (see 5b(c) and (d)).
So I just made a dress like this, and though I don't feel like I could RULE an empire in it, they way they wore them (low cut, and the chemise underneath damp so it clings to the figure) would certainly distract an entire empire. This is the style of Jane Austen and Rousseau alike, on the heels of two hundred years of nasty corsets. Having worn both, I can say, long live the empire!