Emir or Ameer, a title given to lieutenants of provinces and other officers of the sultan, and occasionally assumed by the sultan himself. The sultan is not unfrequently call "The Great Ameer," and the Ottoman empire is sometimes spoken of as "the country of the Great Ameer." What Matthew Paris and other monks call "ammirals" is the same word. Milton speaks of the "mast of some tall ammiral" (Paradise Lost, i. 294).
The difference between xariff or sariff and amir is this: the former is given to the blood successors of Mahomet, and the latter to those who maintain his religious faith.—Selden, Titles of Honor, vi. 73-4 (1672).
Em'ly (Little), daughter of Tom, the brother-in-law of Dan'el Peggotty, a Yarmouth fisherman, by whom the orphan child was brought up. While engaged to Ham Peggotty (Dan'el's nephew) little Em'ly runs away with Steerforth, a handsome but unprincipled gentleman. Being subsequently reclaimed, she emigrates to Australia with Dan'el Peggotty and old Mrs. Gummidge.—C. Dickens, David Copperfield (1849).
Emma "the Saxon" or Emma Plantagenet, the beautiful, gentle, and loving wife of David, king of North Wales (twelfth century).—Southey, Madoc (1805).
Emmons (David), slow, gentle fellow who never "comes to the point" in his courtship, but visits the "girl" for forty years, and gasps out in dying, "I allers—meant to—have—asked—you to marry me."—Mary E. Wilkins, Two Old Lovers (1887).
Emped´ocles, one of Pythagoras's scholars, who threw himself secretly into the crater at Etna, that people might suppose the gods had carried him to heaven; but alas! one of his iron pattens was cast out with the lava, and recognized.
He to be deemed
A god, leaped fondly into Etna flames,
Empedoclês.
Milton, Paradise Lost, iii. 469, etc. (1665).