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Capital letter   /kˈæpətəl lˈɛtər/   Listen
adjective
Capital  adj.  
1.
Of or pertaining to the head. (Obs.) "Needs must the Serpent now his capital bruise Expect with mortal pain."
2.
Having reference to, or involving, the forfeiture of the head or life; affecting life; punishable with death; as, capital trials; capital punishment. "Many crimes that are capital among us." "To put to death a capital offender."
3.
First in importance; chief; principal. "A capital article in religion" "Whatever is capital and essential in Christianity."
4.
Chief, in a political sense, as being the seat of the general government of a state or nation; as, Washington and Paris are capital cities.
5.
Of first rate quality; excellent; as, a capital speech or song. (Colloq.)
Capital letter (Print.), a leading or heading letter, used at the beginning of a sentence and as the first letter of certain words, distinguished, for the most part, both by different form and larger size, from the small (lower-case) letters, which form the greater part of common print or writing.
Small capital letters have the form of capital letters and height of the body of the lower-case letters.
Capital stock, money, property, or stock invested in any business, or the enterprise of any corporation or institution.
Synonyms: Chief; leading; controlling; prominent.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Capital letter" Quotes from Famous Books



... be explained here that my cabin had the form of the capital letter L the door being within the angle and opening into the short part of the letter. A couch was to the left, the bed-place to the right; my writing-desk and the chronometers' table faced the door. But any one ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... task has been in some degree abridged by a map of the Pacific, corrected in 1834 by MM. D'Urville and Lottin, in which the low islands are distinguished from the high ones (even from those much less than a hundred feet in height) by being written without a capital letter; I have detected a few errors in this map, respecting the height of some of the islands, which will be noticed in the Appendix, where I treat of coral formations in geographical order. To the Appendix, also, I must refer for a more particular account ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin

... quite wrong, and very indigestible too," he continued, yet more mildly; "though people will persist that it's a capital letter." ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... evidence of a now forgotten art, not to be recovered even by the process of picking out the threads. This rag of scarlet cloth,—for time and wear and a sacrilegious moth had reduced it to little other than a rag,—on careful examination, assumed the shape of a letter. It was the capital letter A. By an accurate measurement, each limb proved to be precisely three inches and a quarter in length. It had been intended, there could be no doubt, as an ornamental article of dress; but how it was to be worn, or ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... had been dipping into English papers and books he tackled me on rather a curious point. 'Why is it,' said he, 'that the Englishman when he writes of himself should invariably use a capital letter? That tall "I" which recurs so often in a personal narrative strikes me as being very arrogant. A Frenchman, referring to himself, writes je with a small j; a German, though he may gratify all his substantives ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly


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