Metro

How to spell metro

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce metro

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does metro mean?

1. nounAn underground or urban rapid-transit railway system.
2. adjectiveRelating to a large city and its surrounding urban area.

Metro in a sentence

• noun

  The metro runs every four minutes during rush hour.

• adjective

  The metro area has grown by half a million people in a decade.

• noun

  She takes the metro to work instead of driving.

• adjective

  House prices in the metro region keep climbing.

Where does metro come from?

Language of origin: French

This word is a shortening of the French métropolitain, the name given to the Paris underground railway that opened in 1900 as the Chemin de fer métropolitain, literally the 'metropolitan railway'. That longer word traces back through Latin to the Greek metropolis, meaning 'mother city', formed from meter 'mother' and polis 'city', the term originally describing the parent city of a colony. English borrowed the clipped form 'metro' in the early twentieth century to name underground or rapid-transit systems, and later extended it loosely to mean anything metropolitan or relating to a large city. The same metro- element survives in 'metropolis' and 'metropolitan', while the polis half lives on in words like 'politics' and 'police'. Because the spelling is short and phonetic, it offers no real trap; the only thing to remember is the single 't' and the closing 'o'.

How the word is built

• metro (clipped from metropolitan, ultimately metro- 'mother'
• polis 'city')