What does metropolis mean?
Word: Metropolis
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: Metropolis means a very large and important city, often the capital or the main city of a country or region.
Synonyms: city, capital, megacity
Antonyms: village
Word origin: Comes from Greek metropolis, mother city, from meter, mother, and polis, city.
How do you spell metropolis?
Syllables: me - trop - o - lis
Tricky part: Both vowels after the r are o, so it is not metrapolis or metropalis.
Watch out for: metropolice, metroplis, metrapolis
Memory tip: The end is polis, the Greek word for city, which also ends the name Indianapolis.
Metropolis in a sentence
Example 1: Tokyo is a busy metropolis that never seems to sleep.
Example 2: The small fishing village grew into a metropolis over two centuries.
Example 3: People move to a metropolis to look for work and better schools.
Fun Fact
The word metro comes from the Paris Metropolitain of 1900, which took its name from London's Metropolitan Railway, opened in 1863 and usually called the world's first underground railway.
Practise the CREST Way
Word Connection
Choose the word opposite in meaning to metropolis as used in the sentence:
After ten quiet years in the hills, my uncle found the noisy metropolis exhausting.
a) municipality
b) urban centre
c) conurbation
d) hamlet
Show answer
d) hamlet. A metropolis is a huge city and a hamlet is a tiny village; the other three are all kinds of town or city area.
Spell-o-Spell
One word in the list is misspelt. Choose the meaning of the misspelt word.
1. metropolis 2. suburb 3. censis 4. municipality
a) a huge and important city
b) an area where people live on the edge of a city
c) a town or district with its own local government
d) an official count of the population
Show answer
d) an official count of the population. Census ends in us, so censis is misspelt; municipality, metropolis and suburb are correct.
Word Cookie
Find the extra letter in the word:
mettropolis
a) p
b) l
c) r
d) t
Show answer
d) t. Metropolis has a single t, straight after the me.
Mingle-Mangle
Unjumble the word in the sentence and choose it:
From the hilltop we could see the lights of the great oislprmoet stretching to the sea.
a) metropolis
b) metronome
c) monopolies
d) acropolis
Show answer
a) metropolis. Ten letters with a t, an r and two o's make metropolis; metronome and monopolies need an n, and acropolis an a and a c.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. Name the metropolis among these places.
a) Mandu
b) Mussoorie
c) Munnar
d) Chennai
Show answer
d) Chennai
2. A metropolis usually has ____.
a) only a few hundred houses
b) just one main road
c) no buses or trains at all
d) millions of people living in it
Show answer
d) millions of people living in it
