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metropolitan

UK/mɛtɹəˈpɒlɪtən/US/ˌmɛtɹəˈpɑlɪtən/
adjectiveB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,946 of 15,258mostly written

Metropolitan means to do with a large busy city. A metropolitan area, metropolitan life, the Metropolitan Police.

A metropolitan area is a city with everything that commutes into it, which is usually far larger than the city's own boundary. In the Orthodox churches a metropolitan is a senior bishop, which is the older sense — the bishop of the mother city.

Definitions of metropolitan

  1. 1adjectivemetropolitanTo do with a large busy city.B2+

    “Metropolitan life is fast and noisy compared with the quiet of the village.”

metropolitan is a quality.

Where it comes from

Greek metropolites means of the mother city — meter, a mother, plus polis, a city.

  1. Ancient Greek

    μητροπολίτης

  2. Latin

    metropolitanus

  3. English, today

    metropolitan

From Latin metropolitanus, from Ancient Greek μητροπολίτης.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

metropolitan in the wild

  • Including the Greater Tokyo Area, Tokyo is the second-largest metropolitan economy in the world after New York, with a 2022 gross metropolitan product estimated at US$2.08 trillion.

    Tokyo

  • As social, economic and political institutions have changed, metropolitan areas have become key economic and political regions.

    Metropolitan area

  • As a result, sometimes the precise definition of a given metropolitan area will vary between sources.

    Metropolitan statistical area

  • Broader definitions of the metropolitan area include the satellite cities of Poughkeepsie, New York; Trenton, New Jersey; and New Haven, Connecticut and their suburbs.

    New York metropolitan area

  • The New York metropolitan area's population is larger than that of the state of New York, and the metropolitan airspace accommodated over 130 million passengers in 2016.

    New York metropolitan area

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.