metropolitan

plural metropolitans

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

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   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.

comparative more metropolitan · superlative most metropolitan

1. ChristianityPertaining to the see or province of a metropolitan.First known use 15th c.
2. Of, or pertaining to, a metropolis or other large urban settlement.First known use 16th c.

   But the one [letter] in the unknown script and with a metropolitan post mark—could it be from some London Woman? In spite of having lived in the country all her life and for the most part in remote Devon, Miss Tilehurst had always understood that such beings really existed.

   1934, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], The Bravo of London

3. Of or pertaining to the parent state of a colony or territory, or the home country, e.g. metropolitan France

   Policies relating to the elimination of racial discrimination which obtain in metropolitan New Zealand are applicable in the Tokelau Islands.

   1974, New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Report on the Tokelau Islands, page 8

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   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.

   2015, Wouter Veenendaal, The Dutch Caribbean municipalities in comparative perspective. Island Studies Journal 10(1): 15–30

1. Englanddatednot comparableOf or pertaining to London, United Kingdom.

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

   Synonyms: Met