metro
Pluralmetros
Pluralmetros
- 1A rapid-transit rail system that serves a metropolitan area and usually runs underground, or a single train on that system.
Visitors to Paris soon learn that the metro is the quickest way across the city.
She just missed one metro, but another pulled into the station two minutes later.
Similarsubway, underground
Note
Paris gave English the word: métro is the French clipping of métropolitain, from the Chemin de fer métropolitain, an early name for the city's system, and its roots are Greek words for "mother" and "city." London says the Underground or the Tube instead, and Canada and Scotland say subway. Like bus and train, it takes by with no article: to the stadium by metro.
- 2A metropolitan area: a large city together with the suburbs and towns around it.
Home prices rose fastest in mid-sized metros across the South last year.
The report ranks each metro by average commute time and housing cost.
Note
English made this clipping itself, straight from metropolitan, so it is a separate coinage from the Paris-born railway word. It suits talk of cities as places to live and work, typically in the plural with a cost or size in front: Derek Thompson's "America's Hot New Job Is Being a Rich Person's Servant" (2019) writes of work in "high-cost metros."
- 3Metropolitan; relating to a large city together with its surrounding suburbs.
Traffic in metro Atlanta slowed to a crawl after the storm.
The paper moved two reporters from the sports desk to the metro desk.
Similarmetropolitan
Oppositerural
Less common meaning
- 4An urban rapid-transit rail system that usually runs lighter trains on lighter track, such as an S-Bahn, or a train on that system.
Unlike the city's heavy underground lines, the new metro runs lightweight trains on surface track out to the suburbs.
Informs how long the passenger has to wait for the next metro
2006, C. A. Brebbia, V. Dolezel
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Origins
From French métro, a clipping of métropolitain (from Ancient Greek mḗtēr, “mother”, + pólis, “city”), as in Chemin de fer métropolitain, an early name for the Paris Métro. That name directly translated “Metropolitan Railway”, the original name of the earliest part of the London Underground, built in 1863.
A shortened form of metropolitan.