metropolitan

What it means

1. ChristianityA bishop empowered to oversee other bishops; an archbishop.First known use 15th c.

   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.

   1663, Edward Waterhous[e], 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

   2 more examples

   She was in love with all the new royal princes and princesses, who entered into family relationship with the imperial family; she had been in love with a metropolitan, with a vicar, and with a priest.

   1904 [1878], chapter 23, in Leo Wiener, transl., Anna Karénin, Boston: D. Estes & Company, translation of Анна Каренина (Anna Karenina) by Leo Tolstoy, part 5, page 423

   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.

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

   Synonyms: metropolitan bishop

2. The inhabitant of a metropolis.First known use 18th c.

In a sentence

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.

1663, Edward Waterhous[e], 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

Where it comes from

1. Proto-Indo-European*méh₂tēr
2. Proto-Hellenic*mā́tēr
3. Ancient Greekμήτηρ (mḗtēr)
4. Proto-Indo-European*tpelH-
5. Proto-Hellenic*ptólis
6. Ancient Greekπόλῐς (pólĭs)
7. Ancient Greekμητρόπολις (mētrópolis)
8. Latinmētropolis
9. Late Latinmētropolītānus
10. Englishmetropolitan

From Late Latin mētropolītānus, from mētropolis [itself from Ancient Greek μητρόπολις (mētrópolis, literally “mother-polis”)] + -ītānus (“-itan”, suffix forming adjectives from nouns ending with -polis) [ultimately from Ancient Greek -ίτης (-ítēs, “-ite”) + -ānus (“-an”)]. By surface analysis, metropolis + -itan (i.e. metropolis + -ite + -an).

First known use: 15th c.