Tsar

How to spell tsar

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tsar

What does tsar mean?

1. nounThe title of the former supreme ruler or emperor of Russia.
2. nounA senior official appointed to lead policy or oversee a particular area of public concern.

Tsar in a sentence

• The last tsar of Russia was overthrown in 1917.

• The government appointed a drugs tsar to coordinate the new strategy.

• The museum displays a crown once worn by a tsar.

• As the company's data tsar, she set the rules for handling customer records.

Where does tsar come from?

Language of origin: Other

This word comes from the Russian tsar, the title of the supreme ruler of Russia, which descends directly from the Latin Caesar, the family name of Julius Caesar that later became a generic word for 'emperor'. The same Caesar root gave German its Kaiser and several Slavic languages their words for monarch, so a single Roman surname seeded the imperial titles of much of Europe. English began using the word in the 1500s to describe the rulers of Russia, and writers experimented with several spellings, including czar, tzar, and tsar. The form tsar is the one that most faithfully mirrors the original Russian sound and Cyrillic spelling, which is why it is now the preferred form in British usage. The unusual opening cluster ts, rare at the start of English words, is exactly the spelling trap, since many writers reach instead for the older cz- form.

How the word is built

• tsar (whole word, an English rendering of Russian tsar 'emperor', ultimately from Latin Caesar)