metropolitan
Americanadjective
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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.
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of or relating to a large city, its surrounding suburbs, and other neighboring communities.
the New York metropolitan area.
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pertaining to or constituting a mother country.
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pertaining to an ecclesiastical metropolis.
noun
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an inhabitant of a metropolis.
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a person who has the sophistication, fashionable taste, or other habits and manners associated with those who live in a metropolis.
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Eastern Church. the head of an ecclesiastical province.
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an archbishop in the Church of England.
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Roman Catholic Church. an archbishop who has authority over one or more suffragan sees.
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(in ancient Greece) a citizen of the mother city or parent state of a colony.
adjective
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of or characteristic of a metropolis
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constituting a city and its suburbs
the metropolitan area
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of, relating to, or designating an ecclesiastical metropolis
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of or belonging to the home territories of a country, as opposed to overseas territories
metropolitan France
noun
Other Word Forms
- intermetropolitan adjective
- metropolitanism noun
- nonmetropolitan adjective
- supermetropolitan adjective
- unmetropolitan adjective
Etymology
Origin of metropolitan
1300–50; Middle English < Late Latin mētropolītānus of, belonging to a metropolis < Greek mētropolī́t ( ēs ) ( metropolis, -ite 1 ) + Latin -ānus -an
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Milan is Italy's second-largest city after Rome, and its metropolitan area stretches across much of Lombardy and into eastern Piedmont.
From Science Daily
Each trip to the so-called metropolitan area was quite an event: waking up early, dressing nicely, deciding what we might eat for lunch.
From BBC
Published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research is the first to directly compare how these two pandemics moved through U.S. metropolitan areas.
From Science Daily
Austin was the slowest market among the 50 most populous metropolitan areas, followed by San Antonio and Fort Lauderdale.
“Expanding the rankings enables readers to look beyond major metropolitan areas, discovering small and mid-size cities that may appeal to them as retirement destinations,” said Tim Smart, a U.S.
From MarketWatch
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
