metropolitan area

noun

"metropolitan-area" is a 16-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“metropolitan area” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
17
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - An area of population usually with a central or core city and surrounding towns or suburbs.

Corpus desk

Index EN-metropolitan-area · metropolitan area · English

metropolitan area · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 17 letters
  • VOW-8 8 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "M" thin
  • PHOTO-UNK Peer pending

Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Key facts for metropolitan area
PropertyValue
Headwordmetropolitan area
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters17
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “metropolitan area” in English

metropolitan areasits beyond the 100,000 most-frequent English words, in the long tail of technical, archaic, or otherwise rare vocabulary where spelling doubt tends to strike hardest.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

metropolitan area is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "An area of population usually with a central or core city and surrounding towns or suburbs.".

No generated misspelling entries exist for metropolitan area in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

This entry carries no recorded etymology, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is metropolitan area, spelled M-E-T-R-O-P-O-L-I-T-A-N- -A-R-E-A.

Definition

  1. 1
    An area of population usually with a central or core city and surrounding towns or suburbs.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how metropolitan area appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Before the year was out there were, in addition to Redwood's pioneer vehicle, quite a number of motor-perambulators to be seen in the west of London. I am told there were as many as eleven; but the most careful inquiries yield trustworthy evidence of only six within the Metropolitan area at that time.
  2. 1911 — Encyclopædia Britannica, "Brisbane" The population of the metropolitan area in 1901 was 119,907; of the city proper, 28,953; of South Brisbane, 25,481.

This word in other languages

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "metropolitan area"?
"metropolitan area" is spelled M-E-T-R-O-P-O-L-I-T-A-N- -A-R-E-A.
What does "metropolitan area" mean?
As a noun, "metropolitan area" means: An area of population usually with a central or core city and surrounding towns or suburbs.
What language does "metropolitan area" come from?
"metropolitan area" is a English word. PlainSpell's reference spans five languages -- English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German -- with definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for each.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list