When the word metropolitan (from the Greekmetera = mother and polis = town) is used as an adjective, as in metropolitan bishop, metropolitan France, or metropolitan area it can mean:
of or belonging to the home territories of a country, as opposed to overseas territories (for example: Metropolitan France)
of, relating to, or designating an ecclesiastical metropolis (example: metropolitan bishop)
When it is used as a noun, it can mean:
A metropolitan bishop (thus one may write "Alexius became Metropolitan of Kiev in 1354"; including the word bishop in such a sentence would be unusual),
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A metropolitan area is a large population center consisting of a large city and its adjacent zone of influence, or of several neighboring cities or towns and adjoining areas, with one or more large cities serving as its hub or hubs.
A metropolitan area usually combines an agglomeration (the contiguous built-up area) with peripheral zones not themselves necessarily urban in character, but closely bound to the centre by employment or commerce; these zones are also sometimes known as a commuter belt, and may extend well beyond the urban periphery depending on the definition used.
The term metropolitan area is sometimes abbreviated to 'metro', for example in Metro Manila and Washington, DC Metro Area, and in that case should not be mistaken to mean the metro rail system of the city.
Metropolitan, in ecclesiastical language, refers to whatever relates to the metropolis, the principal city, or see, of an ecclesiastical province; thus we speak of a metropolitan church, a metropolitan chapter, a metropolitan official, etc. The word metropolitan, used without any qualificative, means the bishop of the metropolitan see, now usually styled archbishop.
The entire body of rights and duties which canon law attributes to the metropolitan, or archbishop as such, i.e., not for his own diocese, but for those suffragan to him and forming his ecclesiastical province, is called the metropoliticum.
On this principle the nullity of Napoleon's marriage was decided by the diocesan and the metropolitan officials of Paris, 1810 (Schnitzer, "Kathol.
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