Definition of CAPITAL

capital

Plural: capitals

Noun

  • The distinct upper part of a column or pillar.
  • assets available for use in the production of further assets
  • wealth in the form of money or property owned by a person or business and human resources of economic value
  • a seat of government
  • one of the large alphabetic characters used as the first letter in writing or printing proper names and sometimes for emphasis
    • "printers once kept the type for capitals and for small letters in separate cases; capitals were kept in the upper half of the type case and so became known as upper-case letters"
  • a center that is associated more than any other with some activity or product
    • "the crime capital of Italy"
    • "the drug capital of Columbia"
  • the federal government of the United States
  • a book written by Karl Marx (1867) describing his economic theories
  • the upper part of a column that supports the entablature
  • Already-produced durable goods available for use as a factor of production, such as steam shovels (equipment) and office buildings (structures).
  • Money and wealth. The means to acquire goods and services, especially in a non-barter system.
  • The capitalist class; investors considered collectively with respect to their societal (economic, political, cultural, etc.) influence.
  • 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.
  • The most important city in the field specified.
  • An uppercase letter.
  • Knowledge; awareness; proficiency.
  • The chief or most important thing.
  • The uppermost part of a column.

Adjective Satellite

  • first-rate
    • "a capital fellow"
    • "a capital idea"
  • of primary importance
    • "our capital concern was to avoid defeat"
  • uppercase
    • "capital A"

Adj

  • Of prime importance.
  • Chief (in a political sense, as being the seat of the general government of a state or nation).
  • Excellent.
  • Punishable by, or involving punishment by, death.
  • Uppercase.
  • Uppercase.
  • used to emphasise greatness or absoluteness
  • Of or relating to the head.

Intj

  • used as an expression of approval, satisfaction, or delight.

Examples

  • capital punishment; capital murder
  • He does not have enough capital to start a business.
  • He's dead with a capital D!
  • Interpreters need a good amount of cultural capital in order to function efficiently in the profession.
  • London and Paris are capital cities.
  • One begins a sentence with a capital letter.
  • That is a capital idea!
  • That's an amazing idea! Capital!
  • The letter ’I’ was the CAPITAL of her brilliant 8-letter word, making it tower over others.
  • The markets crashing symbolized capital’s discontent with the tax reforms passed.
  • The Welsh government claims that Cardiff is Europe’s youngest capital.
  • Washington D.C. is the capital of the United States of America.
  • You're a genius with a capital G!

Origin / 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.
Compare chattel and kith and kine (“all one’s possessions”), which also use “cow” to mean “property”.
Doublet of cattle and chattel.

Synonyms

cap, capital letter, chapiter, Das Kapital, great, majuscule, upper-case letter, uppercase, Washington, working capital, caps, majuscular

Antonyms

lowercase, lower-case, minuscule

Scrabble Score: 11

capital: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Word
capital: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
capital: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary

Words With Friends Score: 14

capital: valid Words With Friends Word