| 释义 |
megalopolis|mɛgəˈlɒpəlɪs|
[f. Gr. µεγαλο- great + πόλις city; see megalo-, -polis.]
Used (freq. with capital initial) as a designation of a very large city or its way of life; also, the practice of building large cities. Also attrib. Cf. † megapolis.
The normal Eng. pl. (after metropolis) would be megalopolises, but the irregular formation megalopoli occurs occasionally.
1832Webster, Megalopolis. 1869M. Collins Ivory Gate II. 211 Paul and his wife are back in the precincts of Megalopolis. 1945Archit. Rev. XCVII. 5/1 Normal impulses, suppressed and frustrated in Megalopolis, return in the form of collective aggressions. 1951M. McLuhan Mech. Bride (1967) 38/2 Megalopolis is both humanly and economically wasteful. 1959Economist 25 Apr. 330/1 The dream of a massive shift of the American economy to the Great Lakes, and the growth of a vast new megalopolis along their shores. 1964Economist 12 Sept. 1010/2 ‘Megalopolis’—or excessive urbanisation resulting from modern technology. 1968C. A. Doxiadis Between Dystopia & Utopia 4 The city turned into a metropolis, which has now grown into a megalopolis. 1969Daily Tel. 29 May 16/3 Los Angeles..is a vast megalopolis of over 10 million, not so much a city as an endless sprawling suburb without a centre..and criss-crossed with multi-lane freeways. 1970New Scientist 5 Feb. 259/1 From the mud hut level of Indian villages and towns to the concrete towered megalopoli of Europe and North America. 1972Listener 9 Mar. 293 Big money is unlikely to be made except perhaps in a very few megalopolis centres.
So megaloˈpolitan n. and a., (a) n. an inhabitant of a megalopolis; (b) adj. of or pertaining to a megalopolis or the way of life characteristic of large cities.
[1633E. Grimstone tr. (title) The History of Polybius the Megalopolitan.] 1926Brit. Weekly 29 July 355/3 Follows the winter season, with its dawning of ‘megalopolitan civilization’, its extinction of spiritual creative force. 1930E. Waugh Labels i. 15 After the exaggerated cleanliness and sparkle of the preceding country, this exaggerated sombreness and squalor, called up..all the hatred and weariness which the modern megalopolitan sometimes feels towards his own civilisation. 1946Theology XLIX. 94 The report deplores the sprawl of houses but not that of megalopolitan culture. 1957R. Hoggart W. H. Auden 15 Auden's interest is in men in urban societies, in men now living through their perennial moral and metaphysical problems in megalopolitan settings. 1971Daily Tel. 30 Nov. 10/4 The same international, megalopolitan forces, rolling over everything in their path, threaten Welsh and English alike. 1974Listener 10 Jan. 53/2 Megalopolitan life brings with it anonymity and bewilderment. |