a. and sb. [f. COSMOPOLITE + -AN; cf. metropolitan.]
A. adj.
1. Belonging to all parts of the world; not restricted to any one country or its inhabitants.
1848. Mill, Pol. Econ., II. III. xvii. 113. Capital is becoming more and more cosmopolitan.
1865. Grote, Plato, I. iv. 151. The mixed and cosmopolitan character of the Alexandrine population.
1869. R. Semmes, Service Afloat, xlvii. 670. They were of the cosmopolitan sailor class.
2. Having the characteristics that arise from, or are suited to, a range over many different countries; free from national limitations or attachments.
1844. Emerson, Lect. Yng. Amer., Wks. (Bohn), II. 296. The legislation of this country should become more catholic and cosmopolitan than that of any other.
1847. Dickens, Lett. (1880), I. 179. He is of a cosmopolitan spirit.
1848. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., I. 212. That cosmopolitan indifference to constitutions and religions which is often observable in persons whose life has been passed in vagrant diplomacy.
3. Nat. Hist. Widely diffused over the globe; found in all or many countries.
1860. Gosse, Rom. Nat. Hist., 38. A few kinds seem, indeed, cosmopolitan, but the great majority have a limited range.
1875. Lyell, Princ. Geol., II. III. xxxv. 272. Plants … many of which possess such unlimited powers of diffusion as to be almost cosmopolitan in their range.
B. sb. = COSMOPOLITE.
c. 1645. Howell, Lett. (1650), II. Vote Poem, Every ground May be one’s country—for by birth each man Is in this world a cosmopolitan.
1868. E. Edwards, Ralegh, I. xxiii. 520. He was no cosmopolitan. He was an Englishman of the English.
1875. Merivale, Gen. Hist. Rome, xxvii. (1877), 189. The cultivation of the ideas of Greece … transformed the children of Quirinus into mere cosmopolitans.
