metropolitan

From Late Latin metropolitanus, from Ancient Greek μητροπολίτης (mētropolítēs).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /mɛtɹəˈpɒlɪt(ə)n/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /mɛtɹəˈpɑlɪt(ə)n/, [-ɾ(ə)n]

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɒlɪtən
• Hyphenation: me‧tro‧po‧lit‧an

metropolitan (plural metropolitans)

1. (Orthodox Christianity) A bishop empowered to oversee other bishops; an archbishop. [from 15th c.]

   Synonym: metropolitan bishop

   • 1663, Edward Waterhous [i.e., Edward Waterhouse], chapter I, in Fortescutus Illustratus; or A Commentary on that Nervous Treatise De Laudibus Legum Angliæ, Written by Sir John Fortescue Knight, […], London: […] Tho[mas] Roycroft for Thomas Dicas […], →OCLC, page 38:

     I knovv God by Miracle can inſtruct Kings, as he rained Mannah, and raiſed the Apoſtles from letterless Fiſher-men, to learned Metropolitans, and profound Doctours.

   • 2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin, published 2010, page 514:

     Yet from the late thirteenth century the metropolitan based himself either in Moscow or Vladimir-on-the-Kliazma, which was also in Muscovite territory, and it became the ambition of the Muscovites to make this arrangement permanent.

2. The inhabitant of a metropolis. [from 18th c.]

metropolitan (comparative more metropolitan, superlative most metropolitan)

1. (Orthodox Christianity) Pertaining to the see or province of a metropolitan. [from 15th c.]
2. Of, or pertaining to, a metropolis or other large urban settlement. [from 16th c.]

   Coordinate term: micropolitan

3. Of or pertaining to the parent state of a colony or territory, or the home country, e.g. metropolitan France
   • 1974, New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Report on the Tokelau Islands, page 8:

     Policies relating to the elimination of racial discrimination which obtain in metropolitan New Zealand are applicable in the Tokelau Islands.

   • 2015, Wouter Veenendaal, The Dutch Caribbean municipalities in comparative perspective. Island Studies Journal 10(1): 15–30:

     the new political status of these islands marks a definite break with the traditional Dutch colonial practice to keep its Caribbean colonies at a distance; and, after 2010, Dutch metropolitan laws and dministrative practices started being implemented on the islands.

• non-metropolitan

metropolitan m (feminine singular metropolitana, masculine plural metropolitans, feminine plural metropolitanes)

1. metropolitan

Borrowed from French métropolitain.

metropolitan n (plural metropolitane)

1. (dated) metro, subway, underground