Komerex was a Klingonaase language word meaning "a structure that grows". A central part of this Klingon philosophy was that every system, from a living organism to a society to a major government, could exist only in one of two states: either growing and living, or shrinking and dying. This facet of Klingon psychology and philosophy does not recognize the concept of an equilibrium or zero population growth. By their definition, if something was not growing, it must therefore be dying. Komerex (or, more commonly, empire) was the first half of this dichotomy; its opposite was khesterex, "a structure that dies", with the root word khest, which is a vulgarity that even implies a translation of khesterex as "a structure that allows itself to be subjugated" in a very base sense.