metropole

plural metropoles

1. A metropolis; the main city of a country or area.First known use 15th c.

   The first Antifas functioned as platforms to organize against far-right groups like the National Democratic Party (NPD) in an autonomist movement still numbering in the tens of thousands of active members and capable of occupying entire city blocks in some West German metropoles.

   2017 May 28, Loren Balhorn, “The Lost History of Antifa”, in Jacobin Magazine

2. The parent-state of a colony.First known use 19th c.

   Though the metropole remained confident in its Westminster ways, its newly independent colonies imposed constitutional constraints on the powers of parliament.

   2007, Bruce Ackerman, “Meritocracy v. Democracy”, in London Review of Books, 29:5, p. 9

   1 more example

   As Europe's population growth and commercial activity slowed down after 1620, its thirst for Spanish-American silver slackened: metropole and colony were drifting apart.

   2007, John Darwin, After Tamerlane, Penguin, published 2008, page 63

3. archaicA bishop's see.First known use 19th c.