Germanie

Proper noun

Germany (countable and uncountable, plural Germanys or Germanies)

1. A nation or civilization occupying the country around the Rhine, Elbe, and upper Danube Rivers in Central Europe, taken as a whole under its various governments.
   • Ancient Germany, excluding from its independent limits the province weſtward of the Rhine, which had ſubmitted to the Roman yoke, extended itſelf over a third part of Europe. Almoſt the whole of modern Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Livonia, Pruſſia, and the greater part of Poland, were...1776, Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume I, page 218
   1. (historical, obsolete) The German Sprachraum; the countries and territories within Europe where German is or was the primary language.
2. (historical) A nominal medieval kingdom forming part of the Carolingian and Holy Roman Empires; (metonymic, now uncommon) the Holy Roman Empire in its entirety; (metonymic, obsolete) the Austrian Habsburg empire in its entirety.
   • There had been a long bloody war in the empire of Germany for twelve years, between the Emperor, the Duke of Bavaria, the King of Spain, and the Popiſh Princes and Electors, on the one side; and the Proteſtant Princes on the other; and both ſides having been exhauſted by the war, and even the...1759, A Military History of Germany; and of England. From the Year 1631 to the Year 1648. Being the Memoirs of an English Gentleman, who served in the army of Gustavus Adolphus; and afterwards in the...
3. (historical) An empire formed by Prussia in 1871 with its capital at Berlin.
4. (historical) A republic formed in 1918 with its capital at Berlin, inclusive of the Nazi regime who controlled it after 1933.
   • Severing's belief that trade union workers were the most progressive and democratic element in Germany holds up well under investigation.1996, Paul Bookbinder, Weimar Germany: The Republic of the Reasonable, →ISBN, page 90
5. (historical, uncommon) The socialist republic formed in 1949 with its capital at Berlin, more often known in English as East Germany.

See all 13 meanings of Germany