Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A very large city.
  • noun A region made up of several large cities and their surrounding areas in sufficient proximity to be considered a single urban complex.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A chief city; a metropolis.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun rare A chief city; a metropolis.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A large conurbation, where two or more large cities have sprawled outward to meet, forming something larger than a metropolis; a megacity.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a very large urban complex (usually involving several cities and towns)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[megalo– + Greek polis, city; see pelə- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From megalo- (“great”) + -polis (“city”).

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Examples

  • So the uber-immigrant wants to make sure his megalopolis is a desirable destination point for the digital natives?

    Rupert Murdoch (Fox) on Blogs and Podcasting 2005

  • Do you remember years ago there was a thing called megalopolis?

    Failure is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words 1995

  • I was flipping through Wikipedia and came across the article on megacities (which they use as synonymous with "megalopolis", not "amalgamated city" like Torontonians do) and was struck by one statistic:

    crime 2005

  • LAMB: Living in this kind of megalopolis that we do here on the East Coast.

    Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster 1995

  • We may observe in passing that similar tendencies are at work even in some of the richest countries, where they manifest as a trend toward excessive urbanization, toward "megalopolis", and leave, in the midst of affluence, large pockets of poverty-stricken people, "drop-outs," unemployed and unemployables.

    Chapter 10 1983

  • The creators of the Judge Dredd comic strip acknowledge Calhoun's influence in the depiction of their lawless "megalopolis", Mega City One.

    The Guardian World News Aditya Chakrabortty 2010

  • The creators of the Judge Dredd comic strip acknowledge Calhoun's influence in the depiction of their lawless "megalopolis", Mega City One.

    The Guardian World News Aditya Chakrabortty 2010

  • It slices through nightmare traffic in a megalopolis that includes Boston, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, where one city's suburbs sprawl into another's.

    For Amtrak Riders, It's All Aboard Despite The Cost 2010

  • It slices through nightmare traffic in a megalopolis that includes Boston, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, where one city's suburbs sprawl into another's.

    For Amtrak Riders, It's All Aboard Despite The Cost 2010

  • It slices through nightmare traffic in a megalopolis that includes Boston, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, where one city's suburbs sprawl into another's.

    For Amtrak Riders, It's All Aboard Despite The Cost 2010

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