[me-truh-pol-i-tn] 
| 1. | of, noting, or characteristic of a metropolis or its inhabitants, esp. in culture, sophistication, or in accepting and combining a wide variety of people, ideas, etc. |
| 2. | of or pertaining to a large city, its surrounding suburbs, and other neighboring communities: the New York metropolitan area. |
| 3. | pertaining to or constituting a mother country. |
| 4. | pertaining to an ecclesiastical metropolis. |
| 5. | an inhabitant of a metropolis. |
| 6. | a person who has the sophistication, fashionable taste, or other habits and manners associated with those who live in a metropolis. |
| 7. | Eastern Church. the head of an ecclesiastical province. |
| 8. | an archbishop in the Church of England. |
| 9. | Roman Catholic Church. an archbishop who has authority over one or more suffragan sees. |
| 10. | (in ancient Greece) a citizen of the mother city or parent state of a colony. |
t(ēs) (see metropolis, -ite 1 ) + L -ānus -an 
| met·ro·pol·i·tan (mět'rə-pŏl'ĭ-tən) adj.
[Middle English, of a metropolitan bishop, from Late Latin mētropolītānus, metropolitan, from Greek mētropolītēs, citizen of a metropolis, from mētropolis, mother city; see metropolis.] |
metropolitan
in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican churches, the head of an ecclesiastical province. Originally, a metropolitan was a bishop of the Christian Church who resided in the chief city, or metropolis, of a civil province of the Roman Empire and, for ecclesiastical purposes, administered a territorial area coextensive with a civil province. The first known use of the title in church conciliar documents was at the Council of Nicaea in 325, which definitely established the metropolitan in the organization of the church
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