Kaiser

How to spell kaiser

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce kaiser

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does kaiser mean?

1. nounAn emperor, especially the ruler of Germany or of Austria before 1918.
2. nounA round, crusty bread roll with a folded or pinwheel pattern on top, used for sandwiches.

Kaiser in a sentence

• The museum displays a portrait of the German kaiser in full military dress.

• The deli served the pastrami on a fresh kaiser with mustard.

• The history lecture covered the abdication of the kaiser at the end of the war.

• She split the kaiser in half and filled it with egg and bacon.

Where does kaiser come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from the German Kaiser, the title borne by the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire and later of unified Germany and of Austria. Kaiser descends directly from the Latin Caesar, which began as the family name of Gaius Julius Caesar and then became a generic word for 'emperor' after Augustus and his successors adopted it as a title. The Germanic peoples borrowed the Latin word very early, while the original Latin C was still pronounced like a hard 'k', which is exactly why German says and spells it with that opening 'k' sound rather than the soft 's' of English 'Caesar'. The same imperial root also produced the Russian 'tsar', so Kaiser and Tsar are in effect cousins, both meaning 'emperor'. English adopted Kaiser as a foreign title, and it became especially familiar through Wilhelm II during the First World War; the spelling trap is the 'ai' that sounds like a long 'i', a giveaway of its German rather than Latin route into the language.

How the word is built

• kaiser (from Latin Caesar, the imperial title taken as a name)