Definition of "metropolitan" []

• Of, relating to, or characteristic of a major city: crowded metropolitan streets; a metropolitan newspaper. (adjective)
• Of or constituting a large city or urbanized area, including adjacent suburbs and towns: the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area; a metropolitan county. (adjective)
• Of, relating to, or constituting the home territory of an imperial or colonial state. (adjective)
• Of or relating to an ecclesiastical metropolitan. (adjective)
• A citizen of a metropolis, especially one who displays urbane characteristics, attitudes, and values. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Their national or archdiocese leaders have the title metropolitan or patriarch."
• "The title metropolitan is now given to almost every bishop."
• "More than forty years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, two thirds of all black urbanites continue to live under conditions of high segregation and nearly half live in metropolitan areas where the degree of racial isolation is so intense it conforms to the criteria for hypersegregation."