From Late Latin metropolitanus, from Ancient Greek μητροπολίτης.

• (British) IPA: /mɛ.tɹəˈpɒ.lɪ.tən/
• (America) IPA: /mɛ.tɹəˈpɑ.lɪ.tən/

metropolitan (plural metropolitans)

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

   Synonyms: 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.]

• Italian: metropolita
• Russian: митрополи́т
• Spanish: metropolitano

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.]
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

• French: métropolitain, urbain
• Italian: metropolitano
• Portuguese: metropolitano
• Russian: центра́льный
• Spanish: metropolitano

metropolitan (not comparable)

1. (England, dated) Of or pertaining to London.

1. (rail) The Metropolitan Line of London Underground, which has its ancestry in the Metropolitan Railway.

• Met