metropolis
/məˈtɹɑp.ə.lɪs/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.57 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
4
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The mother (founding) polis (city state) of a colony.
noun
A large, busy city, especially as the main city in an area or country or as distinguished from surrounding rural areas.
noun
A generic focus in the distribution of plants or animals.
name
A city, the county seat of Massac County, Illinois, United States.
name
A ghost town in Elko County, Nevada, United States.
Example Sentences
- "Colonies certainly did not become "clones" of their metropolises, but it is equally false that their colonial heritages were not influenced by the organization of the metropolises."
- "Holonym: metropolitan area"
- "An immense metropolis, like London, is calculated to make men selfish and uninteresting."
- "[I]t would not be very much less absurd for someone to write about New York City after having spent only a few years or a few decades in this metropolis of inexhaustible adventure, of terrifying emotional fecundity, of uncapturable character."
- "Love is dead in metropolis / All contact through glove or partition"
- "They call me the Hiphopopotamus / Flows that glow like phosphorous / Popping off the top of this esophagus / Rocking this metropolis"
Etymology
Borrowed from Late Latin mētropolis, from Ancient Greek μητρόπολις (mētrópolis, “mother city”), from μήτηρ (mḗtēr, “mother”) + πόλις (pólis, “city (state)”). By surface analysis, metro- + -polis. Doublet of metropole.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: μητρόπολις
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /məˈtɹɑp.ə.lɪs/
- British English: /mɪˈtɹɒp.ə.lɪs/
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Places.