Word for the Day

empyrean \em- PIIR-ee-&n; - pai-RII- \ noun

1. The highest heaven, in ancient belief usually thought to be a realm of pure fire or light.
2. Heaven; paradise.
3. The heavens; the sky.

adjective:

:of or pertaining to the empyrean of ancient belief.

......
She might have been an angel arguing a point in the empyrean if she hadn’t been, so completely, a woman.
--Edith Wharton, “The Long Run,” The Atlantic, Feburary, 1912

In the poem -- one he had the good sense finally to abandon -- he pictured himself as a blind moth raised among butterflies, which for a brief moment had found itself rising upward into the empyrean to behold “Great horizons and systems and shores all along,” only to find its wings crumpling and itself falling -- like Icarus -- back to earth.
--Paul Mariani, The Broken Tower: A Life of Hart Crane

In my experience, the excitement generated by a truly fresh and original piece of writing is the rocket fuel that lifts Grub Street’s rackety skylab -- with its grizzled crew of editors, publishers, agents, booksellers, publicists -- into orbit in the
empyrean.
--Robert McCrum, “Young blood,” The Observer, August 26, 2001
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Empyrean comes from Medieval Latin empyreum, ultimately from Greek empurios, from en-, “in” + pyr, “fire.”