metropolitan

Pluralmetropolitans

1. 1
   adjective

   Relating to a metropolis or to any other large city or urban area.

   Housing prices across the metropolitan area have climbed faster than wages.

   The governor promised more transit funding for the state's metropolitan regions.

   Similarurban

   Oppositerural, provincial

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A senior bishop, equivalent to an archbishop, who has authority over other bishops.

   The metropolitan called a council of the bishops under him to settle the dispute.

   The new metropolitan was enthroned in the cathedral before a crowd of clergy and worshipers.

   Note

   Where this bishop lived was a matter of politics as well as church order. From the late thirteenth century the metropolitan was based in Moscow or Vladimir, both in Muscovite territory, and Diarmaid MacCulloch's A History of Christianity (2009) describes Moscow's ambition to make that permanent. Rank varies by church: in some Orthodox churches a metropolitan outranks an archbishop, in others the reverse, and Catholics speak of a metropolitan archbishop.

3. 3
   adjective

   Relating to the home country of a state, as distinct from its colonies or overseas territories, as in metropolitan France.

   Residents of the overseas departments vote in the same elections as citizens of metropolitan France.

   Colonial officials were often paid more than civil servants doing the same work in metropolitan Britain.

   Oppositeoverseas, colonial

   Note

   Here the contrast is a home country against its overseas lands, not a city against the countryside, so every village in metropolitan France counts. The adjective stands before the country's name (metropolitan New Zealand, as against the Tokelau Islands) or after a national adjective, as in Dutch metropolitan law set against the Caribbean municipalities.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A person who lives in a metropolis.

   A true metropolitan, he felt uneasy anywhere without subways and late-night cafés.

   The survey compared the commuting habits of metropolitans with those of small-town residents.

   Similarurbanite

5. 5
   adjective

   Relating to the see or province of a metropolitan bishop.

   The dioceses of the region were grouped into a single metropolitan province.

   The pope raised the city's diocese to a metropolitan see in the nineteenth century.

   Note

   It pairs with see or province, and the two differ in size. A metropolitan see is the leading diocese itself, the one the presiding bishop governs directly; a metropolitan province is that diocese together with all the others grouped under it.

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