Metropolitan

How to spell metropolitan

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce metropolitan

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does metropolitan mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to a large city and its densely populated surrounding area.

Metropolitan in a sentence

• The metropolitan area covers the city centre and all its outer suburbs.

• Commuters from across the metropolitan region rely on the train network.

Where does metropolitan come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word reaches back to the Greek mētropolis, which literally meant 'mother city', formed from mētēr 'mother' and polis 'city'. In the ancient world a mētropolis was the parent state that founded colonies abroad, so the colonies were its offspring; the metaphor of a city giving birth to others sits quietly at the heart of the spelling. Greek built the adjective mētropolitēs for someone belonging to such a city, which passed into Late Latin as metropolitanus and then through Old French into English in the late 1300s. Its earliest English use was actually religious, describing the bishop (the 'metropolitan') who presided over a province from its chief city. Only later did the everyday sense settle on anything relating to a large, central city and its surrounding region. The double Greek roots explain the awkward middle: 'metro' then 'polit', so the trap is remembering the single t before the -an and the o in 'pol'.

How the word is built

• metro- (from mētēr: mother)
• polit- (from polis: city)
• -an (adjective/noun suffix)