The word 帝国 is formed through the direct and logical combination of two conceptual building blocks: 帝 (dì), meaning "emperor" or "supreme sovereign", and 国 (guó), meaning "state" or "kingdom". It is a conceptual compound where the first element defines the essential nature or ruling principle of the second. Thus, the term fuses the idea of imperial authority with the idea of a political territory to create the single, unified concept of an "empire", a state whose identity and dominion are fundamentally bound to the rule of an emperor.