Talk:kaiser

RFV discussion: July 2021

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kaiser

Sense 2 - "an autocrat". Currently has no citations. Tharthan (talk) 20:24, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

If we keep this sense, I am inclined to put it at "Kaiser" (with a capital K), as most of what I find uses that. There are enough instances of "kaiser" with various meanings (Kaiser roll, an actual Kaiser), all of which more commonly use "Kaiser", so I think "kaiser" should just be an alt form. Anyway, I could find:

• 1915, T. P.'s Weekly - Volume 26, page 444:

  And Black Ivo is a veritable Kaiser.

• 1919, Far Eastern Political Science Review - Volume 1, page 49:

  Senator Sherman vigorously assailed the Shantung agreement, declaring that it would make the Mikado a veritable Kaiser of the Far East and alienate the sympathies of the 400,000,000 Chinese – from the people of the United States.

• 1929, Through the Leaves, page 489:

  […] which, from the banking point of view, the National City Bank is a veritable kaiser.

Kiwima (talk) 11:04, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Good finds. Especially the 1919 cite, about the Japanese emperor, merges into the "or (rarely) any emperor" sense of Kaiser, which also has a citation of "Louis XIV, the former War-Lord, the Kaiser of France". I wonder if we should split "any emperor" off from the "Germanic emperor" sense and make it part of this "autocrat" sense, like "Any emperor or autocrat or person who exercises or tries to exercise absolute authority."? (Or maybe the wording could be improved or the idea of merging them is no good.) I agree with putting all the definitions at Kaiser. - -sche (discuss) 18:50, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

RFV-resolved. Kiwima (talk) 21:28, 24 July 2021 (UTC)