English Explanatory Dictionary

capital

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. Money and wealth: the means to acquire goods and services, especially in a non-barter system.
  2. Already-produced durable goods available for use as a factor of production, such as tools and bulldozers (equipment) and office buildings (structures).
  3. The capitalist class; investors considered collectively with respect to their societal (economic, political, cultural, etc.) influence.
  4. A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.
  5. The most important city in the field specified.
  6. An uppercase letter.
  7. Knowledge; awareness; proficiency.
  8. The chief or most important thing.
adj
  1. Of prime importance.
  2. Chief (in a political sense, as being the seat of the general government of a state or nation).
  3. Excellent.
  4. Punishable by, or involving punishment by, death.
  5. Uppercase.
  6. used to emphasise greatness or absoluteness
  7. Of or relating to the head.
intj
  1. used as an expression of approval, satisfaction, or delight.
noun
  1. The uppermost part of a column.
name
  1. The Capital Airlines, which operated as a trunk carrier in the United States before merging with United Airlines in 1961.
name
  1. A governorate in northern Bahrain.

Pronunciation

/ˈkæpɪtəl/ [ˈkʰæp.ɪ.ɾɫ̩] en-us-capital.ogg

Word forms

capital capitals capitall

Etymology

From Middle English capital, borrowed partly from Old French capital and partly from Latin capitālis (“of the head”) (in sense “head of cattle”), from caput (“head”) (English cap) + -ālis (suffix forming adjectives). Use in trade and finance originated in Medieval economies when a common but expensive transaction involved trading heads of cattle. The noun is from the adjective. In the fourth sense, displaced native Old English hēafodburg, equivalent to head + borough (“city”). Compare chattel and kith and kine (“all one’s possessions”), which also use “cow” to mean “property”. Doublet of cattle and chattel.

Synonyms

asset caps majuscule majuscular uppercase chapiter

Antonyms

minuscule lower-case

Related words

capita capitol capitulate capitulation captain chapiter chapter

Derived words

anticapital biocapital block capital block capitals capital account capital adequacy capital appreciation bond capital asset capital budgeting capital city capital control capital crime capitaldom capitaled capital equipment capital expenditure capital expense capital flight capital gain capital gains tax capital-G gamer capital good capital goods capital grant capital-intensive capital intensive capital investment capitalism capitalistic capitalitis capitalize capital letter capital loss capitally capital market capital market line capital messuage capital murder capitalness capital offence capital offense capital punishment Capital Regional District capital share capital ship capital stock capital structure capital surplus capital value capital virtues capital war capitonym countercapital cultural capital cybercapital drop capital economic capital erotic capital financial capital fixed capital

Translations

Armenian: մեծատառ Bulgarian: главен Catalan: majúscula Chinese Mandarin: 大寫的 /大写的 Chinese Mandarin: 大寫 /大写 Dutch: hoofd Finnish: versaali Finnish: iso French: majuscule German: Groß- Greek: κεφαλαίος Hungarian: nagy Hungarian: nagybetűs Hungarian: nagy kezdőbetűs Indonesian: kapital Italian: maiuscolo Japanese: 大文字の Korean: 대문자(大文字)의 Polish: duży Polish: duża Portuguese: maiúsculo Russian: загла́вный Russian: большо́й Spanish: capital Spanish: versal Spanish: titular Ukrainian: заголовний Volapük: mayudik
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