metropolis

Word family

• metropolitan
  adjectiveB2

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

Metropolis, megacity, capital, and conurbation all refer to large urban areas, but they emphasize different aspects. Metropolis is the broadest and most literary term, conveying a sense of importance and cultural influence — London, Tokyo, and New York are metropolises. Megacity is a modern, statistical term for any city with over 10 million residents, regardless of its global role (e.g., Dhaka, Kinshasa). Capital specifically refers to the seat of government of a country or region (e.g., Canberra vs. Sydney — Sydney is bigger but Canberra is the capital). Conurbation is a technical, geographical term for a continuous built-up area formed when several towns and cities merge into one urban sprawl (e.g., the Ruhr region in Germany). In everyday speech, metropolis is the best choice when you want to highlight a city's cultural or economic stature; megacity works for sheer size; capital is precise for political centers; conurbation is mainly used in academic or planning contexts.

Common collocations

Etymology

The word metropolis comes from the Greek mētropolis (mother city), formed from mētēr (mother) and polis (city). In ancient Greece it referred to the founding city from which colonies were established. Latin borrowed it, and English adopted it in the 1500s to mean the chief city of a region or country, gradually losing the colonial link and gaining its modern sense of a large, important urban center.