Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Wiktionary
- n. historical An emperor of Russia (before 1917) and of some South Slavic kingdoms.
- n. figuratively A person with great power; an autocrat.
- n. informal, politics, US An appointed official tasked to regulate or oversee a specific area.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The title of the emperor of Russia. See czar.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a male monarch or emperor (especially of Russia prior to 1917)
Etymologies
- From Russian царь (car’), from Old East Slavic цьсарь (cĭsarĭ), from Old Church Slavonic цѣсарь (cěsarĭ), from Gothic 𐌺𐌰𐌹𐍃𐌰𐍂 (kaisar, "emperor"), believed to come from Latin Caesar. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Later in the article Professor Rod Morgan, the youth justice "tsar", is quoted as saying: "If we are dragging into the system kids who can be dealt with outside then we are overloading it and that means it's likely we will not do as good a job as the public expects with higher-risk cases.”
“Zenkevich: It's not a criticism, dear friend, only a caution; using the word tsar with the people as sheep, these are dangerous images, surely.”
“But in his role as growth tsar does he object to the word tsar? he is already causing controversy by suggesting that we shouldn't demonise bankers.”
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph
“Ecclesiastical Regulations", the tsar is the supreme judge of the ecclesiastical college.”
“It was no longer a question whether Russia was to have a tsar but whether the tsar should be a monk or not, and whether it should be”
“A Russian guide told the visitors of the events on that dark night of Jan 17, 1918, when the Bolshevik Guards called the tsar and his family to the cellar and shot them.”
TravelPod.com TravelStream™ — Recent Entries at TravelPod.com
“Even with Liverpool's transformation into an un-vanguard and the equally unexpected decision by Lord Wei, unpaid big society "tsar", to volunteer less, through lack of money and time, an initiative that eludes, insults or enrages virtually everyone beyond the innermost parts of the government is to be pursued and where possible imposed by force of will.”
The Guardian: The 'big society' is collapsing under its inherent absurdity | Catherine Bennett
““Sir Alan Sugar has no business on TV now: The appointment of Sir Alan Sugar as enterprise 'tsar' is a stunt, but it is a Government-sanctioned one: and, as such, he should no longer be allowed to appear on his rather coarse television programme, says Simon Heffer””
“The paper tells us that Britain's telecoms watchdog, Ofcom, could have its decisions overturned by Brussels under proposals to create the "tsar", set to be outlined by the EU commission on Tuesday.”
“Disturbing enough in its own right, the report today on EU plans to create a European telecoms "tsar" in The Sunday Telegraph is even more sinister than it appears.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘tsar’.
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POL - people in power
daredevil, tzar, king, boss, master, commander, chief, kingpin, top banana, bigwig, big cheese, big wheel and 452 more...
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EN - newSPEAK
Buzzwords of our time
actionable, administrivia, advermation, agreeance, backbone provider, back-sourcing, baked in, bandwidth, barn raising, Barneyware, belly-buttons, Below Zeros and 1078 more...
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Really Cool Four-Letter Words
I marvel at the amazing variety of four-letter words in the English language. And that's not even counting really common (to me) words like fuck.
ibis, pelf, sofa, iota, oboe, lava, icon, sped, puha, pulp, puma, kyat and 150 more...
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know-it-all
eunuch, couvade, ecclesiastes, enigma, inevitable, crucible, genteel, bedlam, baculum, scapulimancy, atrophy, smut and 170 more...
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Actual and Spectulative Sburb Classes
A list of all known Heroic Classes available to players of the game Sburb within the Homestuck universe, as well as any other words I can think of which would theoretically adhere to the known guid...
heir, seer, knight, witch, maid, page, thief, mage, rogue, sylph, prince, bard and 116 more...
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Namesakes
Words derived from names, be they historical, literary, or mythological.
quixotic, cereal, odyssey, jovial, mercurial, erotic, achilles' heel, confucianism, lovecraftian, narcissism, echo, fallopian and 101 more...
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Who Are You?
No one ever says, "I want to be a somnambulist when I grow up." But don't let that get in the way of organizing your Wordie lists.
chevalier, somnambulist, sommelier, troubadour, vicar, majordomo, caliph, polyglot, polymath, apprentice, nuyorican, privateer and 107 more...
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Take Me To Your Whosit
About leaders, particularly the authority-figure at the top of the tree.
leader, chief, boss, cap'n, executive, president, head, tsar, alpha male, alpha female, conductor, dean and 127 more...
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European World Systems
europe, colonization, defense, barter, feudalism, gunpowder, technology, guns, domination, lords, monarchs, transition and 250 more...
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Who's in charge here?
honcho, chieftain, viceroy, tsar, sultan, sovereign, shogun, sheikh, shah, regent, ranee, rajah and 15 more...
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slavonicisms
English borrowings from Slavic languages; in some cases, a word might be rooted in another language but entered English from a Slavic language (e.g. nihilism was popularized by Ivan Turgenev, as ни...
ukase, vampire, knout, slave, cravat, tsar, czar, buggery, nihilism, intelligentsia, kopeck, ruble and 30 more...
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rulers, leaders & politicians
caliph, samurai, dynastic, captain, queen, potentate, mikado, kaiser, sovereign, majesty, shah, raja and 46 more...
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surprisingly eponymous
words that derive from personal names, though you might not have guessed it
rodomontade, celadon, galvanize, diesel, sideburns, bloomers, chauvinism, quixotic, epicurean, sandwich, chesterfield, gerrymander and 76 more...
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it's good to be king
or sultana or mogul or...
rulers of the worldruler, regent, regina, king, queen, dowager, empress, emperor, imperator, caesar, pharoh, maharaja and 21 more...
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✽ history
bolshevik, tsar, reichstag, menshevik, squadristi, treaty, alliance system, weltpolitik, glasnost, perestroika, solleret, countermarch and 1 more...
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Gesundheit!
If you say it juuust so, it sounds like a sneeze.
focaccia, spatula, facetious, hooey, kudzu, syzygy, bivouac, brouhaha, flummox, banshee, bugaboo, chin-up and 68 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for tsar.

uselessness Haha! I scratched my head about those two totally different spellings for years! :-P Dec 17, 2007
vanishedone 'The Russian revolution simmered for years and suddenly erupted when the serfs finally realised that the Czar and the Tsar were the same person.' — Woody Allen Dec 17, 2007
sarra Derived, as is kaiser, from Cæsar—first Caius Julius, Roman emperors thereafter being Cæsars, and figuratively, later, any emperor also.
(This English spelling became standard after being chosen by the Times newspaper at the end of the nineteenth century.) Dec 16, 2007
trivet Russian emperor. Mar 3, 2007