megalopolis

noun meg·a·lop·o·lis \ ˌme-gə-ˈlä-pə-ləs \

Updated on: 19 Apr 2018

Definition of megalopolis

1 : a very large city

2 : a thickly populated region centering in a metropolis or embracing several metropolises

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megalopolitan

play \-lō-ˈpä-lə-tən\ noun or adjective

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Examples of megalopolis in a Sentence

what was once a series of discrete towns interspersed with countryside is now one vast megalopolis

Recent Examples of megalopolis from the Web

In the Northeastern megalopolis, Pennsylvania has nine cases, neighboring New Jersey has seven, New York and Connecticut have two each.

— david j. neal, miamiherald, "Here's the cause of the E. coli outbreak, along with a warning from the CDC and FDA | Miami Herald," 13 Apr. 2018
But on Wednesday, Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said some group has been shutting off water distribution valves at about 50 points in the sprawling megalopolis.

— Fox News, "Mexico City: Water cutoffs in capital worsened by sabotage," 7 Mar. 2018
Realizing the power of banding together as a tri-county megalopolis, Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties have submitted a combined proposal.

— michael finney, bob swindell and kelly smallridge, miamiherald, "How do you woo a new Amazon headquarters to the area? It's all in the numbers," 14 Jan. 2018
Her decision makes a lot of sense, as much of the infill and expansion that led to our very own mini-megalopolis fundamentally paralleled the rise of the internet.

— davey g. johnson, Car and Driver, "Bruce Brown, Lady Bird, the City of Trees, and the 96-MPH Caponord: An Appreciation," 12 Dec. 2017
But the more recent one was much closer to the country’s megalopolis, Mexico City, part of which is built on the soft soil of a lake bed and is thus prone to seismic shaking.

— The Economist, "Another earthquake strikes Mexico," 20 Sep. 2017
In February, with this southern megalopolis in the throes of a property frenzy, state banks raised mortgage rates.

— dominique fong, WSJ, "China’s Booming Housing Market Proves Impossible to Tame," 12 July 2017
And a scion of one of the richest family empires in this megalopolis is making a bold bet to turn a dowdy strip of waterfront into a glamorous front-row seat to one of the world’s most stunning skylines.

— wsj real estate, WSJ, "Monogram Residential to Be Acquired by Greystar-Led Group," 5 July 2017
Leave a Note The brand's third hotel in China is, as custom dictates in this megalopolis of scaffolding and swinging cranes, a new-build grown from the rubble of a demolished structure, amid the Bund's historic sweep of colonial edifices.

— Condé Nast Traveler, "The Peninsula Shanghai," 20 Oct. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'megalopolis.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

A "large city" named Megalopolis was founded in Greece in 371 B.C. to help defend the region called Arcadia against the city-state of Sparta. Though a stadium seating 20,000 was built there, indicating the city's impressive size for its time, Megalopolis today has only about 5,000 people. Social scientists now identify 10 megalopolises in the U.S., each with more than 10 million people. The one on the eastern seaboard that stretches from Boston to Washington, D.C., where the densely populated cities seem to flow into each other all along the coast, is now home to over 50 million people. But it's easily surpassed by the Japanese megalopolis that includes Tokyo, with more than 80 million inhabitants.