Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The highest reaches of heaven, believed by the ancients to be a realm of pure fire or light.
- n. The abode of God and the angels; paradise.
- n. The sky.
- adj. Of or relating to the empyrean of ancient belief.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Empyreal; celestially refined.
- n. The region of pure light and fire; the highest heaven, where the pure element of fire was supposed by the ancients to exist: the same as the ether, the ninth heaven according to ancient astronomy.
Wiktionary
- n. The region of pure light and fire; the highest heaven, where the pure element of fire was supposed by the ancients to exist: the same as the ether, the ninth heaven according to ancient astronomy.
- adj. of the sky or the heavens; celestially refined
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The highest heaven, where the pure element of fire was supposed by the ancients to subsist.
- adj. Empyreal.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. inspiring awe
- n. the apparent surface of the imaginary sphere on which celestial bodies appear to be projected
- adj. of or relating to the sky or heavens
Etymologies
- From Latin empȳreus, from Ancient Greek ἔμπυρος (empyros), from ἐν (en, "in") + πῦρ (pyr, "fire") (English pyre). (Wiktionary)
- From Medieval Latin empyreum, from empyreus, empyreal; see empyreal. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The empyrean is the central castle where the emperor (God) sits enthroned.”
“From the ninth sphere to the empyrean, which is mere light.”
“Supreme power, the beetle that folds his wings, that rests in the empyrean, that is born as his own son.”
“From the ninth sphere to the empyrean, which is more light.v. 44.”
“643 One of the halls of the empyrean, which is here personified as a goddess.”
“The building itself, like the bell-ringing ceremonies inside, or indeed the activity on the hallowed floor itself, has been abstracted away from its original purpose and into the metaphysical empyrean of Higher Marketing: as much image as reality.”
The Huffington Post: Robert Teitelman: St. Patrick's Day as a Derivative Instrument
“In the afternoon the wind strengthened after four days of calm and the goldens enjoyed it, rising into the empyrean until they seemed to dissolve in blue.”
“This is perhaps where most readers depart company with Bloom, concluding that his kind of reading is finally an idiosyncratic and insular one, Bloom himself seated aloft in his own peculiar aesthetic empyrean.”
“For $3.7 million, you, too, can sit in this singular creation, gaze out at the magnificent sunsets, watch eagles wheel against the bright blue empyrean, pit yourself against the bellowing 74-mile-an-hour winds, the arctic snows, the unforgiving landscape.”
“It proves to be an unexpectedly profound experience for the man of forty, as Always, until now, [sex] had been too much, bigger than all systems, an empyrean as absolute as those first boyish orgasms, when his hand would make his soul pass through a bliss as dense as an ingot of gold.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘empyrean’.
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Up In The Air @ Wordnik
List of words, terms, and phrases pertaining to or referencing anything that lives, traverses, moves in, uses, or otherwise occupies the space above the ground we walk on. Words and phrases contain...
aeroallergen, aerial, aerial mapping, aerial root, aerobe, aerobiology, aerobioscope, aelophilous, anemotropism, anemoclastic, anafront, antitrades and 273 more...
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fire place
place to place 'fire' words
fire eater, field of fire, campfire, backfire, cannon fire, cease-fire, crown fire, center-fire, direct fire, fire pit, cookfire, fire tongs and 111 more...
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250 More Spelling Words
More words for intermediate and advanced spellers.
melisma, dioecious, jejunity, sialogogue, zingiber, zendik, dithyramb, pneuma, kachina, agiotage, baedeker, sabulous and 238 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Steampunk
Words used quite often in steampunk
ansible, airship, chymical, valve, clockwork, dirigible, thaumaturgy, copper, bronze, difference engine, gear, rivets and 516 more...
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GRE Study guide
Going through the Magoosh website, words I pulled from the verbal section. 2012.
magnanimous, correlate, anglicized, simulacrum, tantamount, obsequiousness, subterfuge, vehement, vociferous, benign, concomitant, veracity and 83 more...
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Latin
exempli gratia, deus ex machina, prolix, sisyphean, minatory, empyrean, cicatrix, demulcent, effulgence, emulsion, garum, ablative and 39 more...
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Aeolus's Vocabulary
Words concerning or relating to wind, air, sky, or heavens! Anything concerning Aeolus (King of the Winds) will be collected here.
aeromancy, zephyr, favonius, boreas, ether, etesian, empyrean, wind, breeze, gust, cyclone, nor'easter and 18 more...
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Poetic
the blue hour, dinner-pail, long-drawn, pettifog, spoonmeat, crawler, eructate, voiced, medial, tessellated, eyeballs, amphigory and 48 more...
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Spheres
Pneumatosphere, planisphere, empyrean, bailiwick, blastula, orbicle, globose, welkin, almucantar, bathysphere, colure, blastocyst and 46 more...
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nice places to visit
eden, shangri la, xanadu, shambala, machu pichu, pangaea, heaven, fantasy island, paradise, heartland, malino, dreams and 15 more...
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♥
ambrosia, inamorata, gossamer, lily-white, hummingbird, roucoulement, poppy, daisy, calypso, lunula, lamb, dove and 1526 more...
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Words That Mean Things
I found most of these words in books! That means they MUST be good.
flinders, periplus, palaver, midden, cadge, legerdemain, flense, lapidary, geas, bailey, susurration, satoris and 128 more...
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adj. + adv.
vainglorious, lanuginous, altiloquent, ambisextrous, desiderative, flothery, liquescent, logoed, autotelic, tropology, erotogenic, crocky and 108 more...
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the most beautiful
velvet, wainwright, susurrous, nutmeg, pegasus, tintinnabular, gossamer, lyricism, rococo, townlet, prince, nymph and 139 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for empyrean.

Telofy “The autochthons say that their cattle can speak but do not, knowing that to speak is to call up demons, all our words being only curses in the tongue of the empyrean.”
—Gene Wolfe, The Urth of the New Sun
Oct 1, 2008
yarb Citation on incorrigibly. Jun 22, 2008