Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Cosmopolitan
/ˌkɒzməˈpɒlɪtən/adjective
At home anywhere, or drawing people and habits from many countries.
The Greek roots
κόσμος
kósmos
world, order
πολίτης
polítēs
citizen
Literally: “citizen of the world”
The story of the word
Asked where he came from, Diogenes the Cynic is reported to have said κοσμοπολίτης, citizen of the world. In a society where a man was defined by his city, that was closer to a provocation than a boast, and the Stoics later turned the provocation into a doctrine of shared human citizenship. English took cosmopolite in the 1590s and cosmopolitan by the 1640s; the magazine and the cocktail are late arrivals living off the word's glamour.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → French → English
- First recorded
- 1640s
Same family
cosmospoliticsmetropolispolicecosmic
In a sentence
Thessaloniki was the most cosmopolitan port in the region before the fire.
He has a cosmopolitan address book and no fixed address.