Cosmopolitan

How to spell cosmopolitan

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce cosmopolitan

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cosmopolitan mean?

1. adjectiveFamiliar with and at ease among many different countries, cultures, and ways of life; worldly and sophisticated.
2. nounA person who is at home anywhere in the world and free from narrow local attachments.

Cosmopolitan in a sentence

• adjective

  London is a famously cosmopolitan city, home to people from every continent.

• noun

  Having lived on four continents, he considered himself a true cosmopolitan.

• adjective

  Years of working abroad gave her a cosmopolitan outlook on food and politics.

• noun

  As a lifelong cosmopolitan, she felt equally comfortable in tokyo, cairo, or paris.

Where does cosmopolitan come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word reaches back to the Greek kosmopolites, a compound of kosmos meaning 'world' or 'ordered universe' and polites meaning 'citizen', so it literally described someone who claimed to be a 'citizen of the world' rather than of one city or state. The idea is famously attributed to the Cynic philosopher Diogenes, who, when asked where he came from, is said to have replied that he was a kosmopolites. English assembled the modern term in the seventeenth century, attaching the familiar -an ending to give 'cosmopolitan', and by the nineteenth century it carried the sense of being worldly, well travelled, and free of local prejudice. The kosmos element survives in everyday relatives such as 'cosmos' and 'cosmic', while the polis root gives us 'politics', 'police', and 'metropolis'. For spelling, it helps to see the seam clearly: cosmo plus polit plus an, with a single s and the tricky unstressed vowels in the middle that often blur into a schwa.

How the word is built

• cosmo- (world, universe)
• polit (city, from Greek polites 'citizen', from polis 'city')
• -an (adjective/noun suffix)