metropolitan

[ me-truh-pol-i-tn ]

adjective

1. of, noting, or characteristic of a metropolis or its inhabitants, especially in culture, sophistication, or in accepting and combining a wide variety of people, ideas, etc.
2. of or relating to a large city, its surrounding suburbs, and other neighboring communities:

   the New York metropolitan area.

3. pertaining to or constituting a mother country.
4. pertaining to an ecclesiastical metropolis.

noun

1. an inhabitant of a metropolis.
2. a person who has the sophistication, fashionable taste, or other habits and manners associated with those who live in a metropolis.
3. Eastern Church. the head of an ecclesiastical province.
4. an archbishop in the Church of England.
5. Roman Catholic Church. an archbishop who has authority over one or more suffragan sees.
6. (in ancient Greece) a citizen of the mother city or parent state of a colony.

metropolitan

/ ˌmɛtrəˈpɒlɪtən /

adjective

1. of or characteristic of a metropolis
2. constituting a city and its suburbs

   the metropolitan area

3. of, relating to, or designating an ecclesiastical metropolis
4. of or belonging to the home territories of a country, as opposed to overseas territories

   metropolitan France

noun

1. 1. Eastern Churches the head of an ecclesiastical province, ranking between archbishop and patriarch
   2. Church of England an archbishop
   3. RC Church an archbishop or bishop having authority in certain matters over the dioceses in his province

Derived Forms

• ˌmetroˈpolitanism, noun

Other Words From

• metro·poli·tan·ism noun
• inter·metro·poli·tan adjective
• nonmet·ro·poli·tan adjective noun
• super·metro·poli·tan adjective
• unmet·ro·poli·tan adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of metropolitan¹

1300–50; Middle English < Late Latin mētropolītānus of, belonging to a metropolis < Greek mētropolī́t ( ēs ) ( metropolis, -ite ¹ ) + Latin -ānus -an

Example Sentences

Planned suburban residential neighborhoods in metropolitan areas known as new towns were initially developed in England.

From Science Daily

This time, it looks like an Orange County work crew teamed up with a warming planet to deprive a metropolitan area of its best access to nature.

From Los Angeles Times

On Friday, the local authorities said traffic would be limited in the Valencia metropolitan area between 00:00 local time on Saturday and 23:59 on Sunday.

From BBC

The only thing that I was aware of was it's a big metropolitan region that we haven't been to before, and so we thought it was an interesting place to go to.

From Salon

The Democratic Party is what it is, a fundamentally unstable coalition of affluent metropolitan white folks and working-class people of color, whose interests are beginning to pull them in different directions.

From Salon

Related Words

• cosmopolitan
• urban
• urbane