Word of the Day

Saturday May 29, 2010

• Today's Word |
• Yesterday's Word |
• Previous Words |
• Subscribe Now

cosmopolite [koz-MOP-uh-lyt]

noun

1. One who is cosmopolitan in his or her ideas or life; a citizen of the world.
2. (Ecology) an animal or plant found in most parts of the world.

• Although he received a conventional Canadian education at Trinity College School in Ontario and later at Trent University, Martel is more of a Henry-like, rootless cosmopolite than a typical Prairie novelist nailed to the earth.
  John Barber, "Yann Martel / Lost, and found, in his own words", The Globe and Mail, Apr 10, 2010
• He was no longer Armenian. He was now a Russian named Arshile Gorky, a cousin of the writer Maxim Gorky. He was a painter; he had, precociously, already studied with Kandinsky and exhibited in Paris. Far from being a shy, bookish, provincial youth, he was a cosmopolite, a bohemian genius prepared to cut a swath through the cultural world of New York, where he settled in 1924.
  Holland Cotter, "From Mimic To Master Of Invention", New York Times, Oct 23, 2009
• She is as much the realist as one can be who is saturated with the romance that is California, her birthplace and her home, if such a true cosmopolite as she can be said to have a home.
  Gertrude Atherton (1857 - 1948) An American writer. Rezanov (1906)

Origin of the Word

Cosmopolite, approximately late 1700, derives from Greek kosmopolites "citizen of the world," from kosmos "world" + polites "citizen."