μητρόπολις

Forms

μητρόπολῐς (mētrópolis) f (genitive μητροπόλεως); third declension^[1] Doric ματρόπολις (Pindar, Aeschylus' lyrics); poetic μητρόπτολις.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is a compound from Ancient Greek μήτηρ (mḗtēr, “mother”) + πόλις (pólis, “city”), with the compounding form μητρο- (mētro-), “mother city”.^[1][4][5] The Doric form is ματρόπολις (matrópolis), and poetry also has μητρόπτολις (mētróptolis).^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Pindar, in the 6th–5th century BC, calls Thera “mother city of great cities” and uses the word for one's own home city;^[2][3] Simonides calls Opous the mother city of the Locrians.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

The word's first meaning was the city that had founded colonies, in relation to them: Herodotus and Thucydides use it of Athens for the Ionians, of Doris for the Peloponnesian Dorians and of Corinth for Corcyra.^[2][5] This is the sense of the colonising period, when settlers set out from a mother city to found a new community.^[6] In lyric and tragedy it also meant one's native city or homeland, and Isyllus used it for a mother's native city.^[2] Figuratively it was the source of something: the Hippocratic writers call the brain the “mother city” of cold, and Diodorus calls history the mother city of philosophy.^[2]

From Xenophon on it also meant a capital, the chief city of a region: Ephesus was the metropolis of Asia and Miletus of Ionia, and in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt it was the chief town of each nome.^[2][7][4] The Septuagint uses it for a capital or mother city.^[8] In the 4th century AD it became the see of a bishop, at first Jerusalem and then any city with a bishop, and so the ecclesiastical province of a metropolitan.^[5][9] Medieval Greek used it for a capital, a great city and the seat of a metropolitan.^[10]

It passed into Late Latin as Latin metropolis, and English borrowed metropolis from Latin, first for the seat of a metropolitan bishop in the 1530s and as a chief city from the 1580s.^[11] The modern form is Modern Greek μητρόπολη (mitrópoli): the ecclesiastical sense continues the Hellenistic and medieval word, while the sense of a great city is learned, partly modelled on French métropole.^[9]

Timeline

• 6th–5th century BC – Pindar calls Thera the mother city of great cities.^[2][3]
• 5th century BC – Herodotus and Thucydides use it for the mother city of colonies.^[2][5]
• 5th–4th century BC – Xenophon uses it for a capital city.^[2][4]
• 3rd century BC – Egyptian papyri use it for the chief town of a nome.^[2][7]
• 4th century AD – It comes to mean the see of a bishop.^[5]
• 1100–1669 – Vernacular texts use μητρόπολη (mitrópoli) for a capital and for the see of a metropolitan.^[10]
• 1530s – English borrows metropolis through Late Latin.^[11]
• Modern Greek – μητρόπολη (mitrópoli) is an ecclesiastical province and also a great city.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. A mother city, the city that founded a colony, in relation to it.^[2][5]
2. (figurative) The source or origin of something.^[2]
3. (poetic) One's native city, homeland.^[2]
4. A capital city, the chief city of a country or region.^[2][4]
5. (Egypt) The chief town of a νομός (nomós).^[2][7]
6. (Christianity) The see of a metropolitan (mētropolī́tēs) bishop.^[5][10]

Word family

• μητροπολίτης (mētropolī́tēs)

Related words

• μήτηρ (mḗtēr)
• πόλις (pólis)
• Latin metropolis
• English metropolis

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ a b c d Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
4. ^ a b c d Bauer, Walter; Danker, Frederick W., et al. (2000), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
6. ^ Cancik, Hubert; Schneider, Helmuth, eds. (2002–2010), Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, Leiden: Brill
7. ^ a b c Charbonnet, André (2025), Chæréphon, v4.7: supplement to Bailly from papyri, inscriptions and recent lexica
8. ^ Lust, Johan; Eynikel, Erik; Hauspie, Katrin (2003), Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, rev. ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft
9. ^ a b c Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
10. ^ a b c Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
11. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com