Definition of "emirate" []

• The office of an emir. (noun)
• The nation or territory ruled by an emir. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The participation of Dubai is seen as vital to the success of the new OECD initiative, as the emirate is a major trading and consumption hub for gold, and comes a decade after a similar process was introduced to keep so-called blood diamonds off the global market."
• "DUBAI — Dubai's Cityscape real-estate exhibition will start Monday at a time of continuing concerns over market oversupply in the emirate, which is hampering recovery two years after the burst of a local property bubble."
• "The conglomerate in May agreed in principle with its main creditors to restructure the debt, helping lift a cloud of uncertainty that had hung over the economy of the emirate, which is struggling with an estimated $100 billion pile of total debt racked up before the onset of the world financial crisis."