Constantinople

American  

[kon-stan-tn-oh-puhl] / ˌkɒn stæn tnˈoʊ pəl /

noun

1. former name of Istanbul.

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Constantinople British  

/ ˌkɒnstæntɪˈnəʊpəl /

noun

1. the former name (330–1926) of Istanbul

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Constantinople Cultural  

1. A city founded by the Roman emperor Constantine the Great as capital of the eastern part of the Roman Empire. Constantine ruled over both parts of the empire from Constantinople, which was later capital of the Byzantine Empire. Constantinople was conquered by Turkish forces in the fifteenth century.

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Today, under the name of Istanbul, Constantinople is the largest city in Turkey.

Example Sentences

A priest traces the endless conflict of Russia and the West to the Crusaders’ sack of Constantinople, formerly Byzantium, in 1204.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 22, 2026

"All neuropsychiatric disorders show fluctuations in symptom severity over hormonal states, suggesting that a better understanding of how hormones influence neural circuits might reveal what causes these diseases," notes Constantinople.

From Science Daily • Nov. 21, 2025

In recognition, for the first time since the Great Schism of 1054, the Patriarch of Constantinople attended the installation of a new Bishop of Rome.

From BBC • Apr. 21, 2025

Between about 1455 and the end of 1500, roughly 30,000 different editions of printed books appeared, amounting to millions of copies, all over western Europe, and as far as Constantinople.

From New York Times • Jan. 17, 2024

In photographs from the time he looks like the underworld figures he idolized, the thin mustachioed thieves and gamblers who filled the seaside bars of Athens and Constantinople.

From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides