empyrean

From Latin empȳreus, from Ancient Greek ἐμπύριος (empúrios), from ἐν (en, “in”) + πῦρ (pûr, “fire”) (English pyre).

• IPA^(key): /ɛmˌpaɪˈɹiːn̩/, /ɛmˈpɪɹi.ən/

empyrean (plural empyreans)

1. The region of pure light and fire; the highest heaven, where the pure element of fire was supposed by the ancients to exist: the same as the ether, the ninth heaven according to ancient astronomy.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book VII”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554:

     So sung they, and the Empyrean rung, / With Halleluiahs:

   • 1863, Alfred Tennyson, Experiments in Quantity

     the deep-domed empyrean / Rings to the roar of an angel onset

   • 1908, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday, Chapter I

     The very empyrean seemed to be a secret.

empyrean (not comparable)

1. of the sky or the heavens; celestially refined
   • 1667, John Dryden, Annus Mirabilis

     In th’empyrean heaven, the bless’d abode, / The Thrones and the Dominions prostrate lie, / Not daring to behold their angry God.

   • 1700, Matthew Prior, Carmen Saeculare

     Yet upward she [the goddess] incessant flies; / Resolv’d to reach the high empyrean Sphere.

   • 1818, John Keats, Endymion

     Lispings empyrean will I sometimes teach / Thine honeyed tongue.

• empyreal

• pyre

• empyrean in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1914