Capital

6 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Capital \Cap"i*tal\, a. [F. capital, L. capitalis capital (in
     senses 1 & 2), fr. caput head. See {Chief}, and cf.
     {Capital}, n.]
     1. Of or pertaining to the head. [Obs.]
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              Needs must the Serpent now his capital bruise
              Expect with mortal pain.              --Milton.
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     2. Having reference to, or involving, the forfeiture of the
        head or life; affecting life; punishable with death; as,
        capital trials; capital punishment.
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              Many crimes that are capital among us. --Swift.
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              To put to death a capital offender.   --Milton.
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     3. First in importance; chief; principal.
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              A capital article in religion         --Atterbury.
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              Whatever is capital and essential in Christianity.
                                                    --I. Taylor.
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     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.
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     5. Of first rate quality; excellent; as, a capital speech or
        song. [Colloq.]
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     {Capital letter} [F, lettre capitale] (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. --Abbott.
  
     Syn: Chief; leading; controlling; prominent.
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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  capital \cap"i*tal\ (k[a^]p"[i^]*tal), n. [Cf. L. capitellum and
     capitulum, a small head, the head, top, or capital of a
     column, dim. of caput head; F. chapiteau, OF. capitel. See
     {chief}, and cf. {cattle}, {chattel}, {chapiter}, {chapter}.]
     1. (Arch.) The head or uppermost member of a column,
        pilaster, etc. It consists generally of three parts,
        abacus, bell (or vase), and necking. See these terms, and
        {Column}.
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     2. [Cf. F. capilate, fem., sc. ville.] (Geog.) The seat of
        government; the chief city or town in a country; a
        metropolis. "A busy and splendid capital" --Macauly.
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     3. [Cf. F. capital.] Money, property, or stock employed in
        trade, manufactures, etc.; the sum invested or lent, as
        distinguished from the income or interest. See {Capital
        stock}, under {Capital}, a.
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     4. (Polit. Econ.) That portion of the produce of industry,
        which may be directly employed either to support human
        beings or to assist in production. --M'Culloch.
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     Note: When wealth is used to assist production it is called
           capital. The capital of a civilized community includes
           {fixed capital} (i.e. buildings, machines, and roads
           used in the course of production and exchange) and
           {circulating capital} (i.e., food, fuel, money, etc.,
           spent in the course of production and exchange). --T.
           Raleigh.
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     5. Anything which can be used to increase one's power or
        influence.
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              He tried to make capital out of his rival's
              discomfiture.                         --London
                                                    Times.
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     6. (Fort.) An imaginary line dividing a bastion, ravelin, or
        other work, into two equal parts.
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     7. A chapter, or section, of a book. [Obs.]
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              Holy St. Bernard hath said in the 59th capital.
                                                    --Sir W.
                                                    Scott.
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     8. (Print.) See {Capital letter}, under {Capital}, a.
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     {Active capital}. See under {Active},
  
     {Small capital} (Print.), a small capital letter; informally
        referred to (in the plural) as {small caps}; as, the
        technical terms are listed in {small caps}. See under
        {Capital}, a.
  
     {To live on one's capital}, to consume one's capital without
        producing or accumulating anything to replace it.
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From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  capital
       adj 1: first-rate; "a capital fellow"; "a capital idea"
       2: punishable by death; "a capital offense"
       3: of primary important; "our capital concern was to avoid
          defeat"
       4: uppercase; "capital A"; "great A"; "many medieval
          manuscripts are in majuscule script" [syn: {great}, {majuscule}]
       n 1: assets available for use in the production of further assets
            [syn: {working capital}]
       2: wealth in the form of money or property owned by a person or
          business and human resources of economic value
       3: a seat of government
       4: 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" [syn: {capital letter}, {upper
          case}, {upper-case letter}, {majuscule}] [ant: {small
          letter}]
       5: a book written by Karl Marx (1867) describing his economic
          theories [syn: {Das Kapital}]
       6: the upper part of a column that supports the entablature
          [syn: {chapiter}, {cap}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  268 Moby Thesaurus words for "capital":
     Grade A, abecedarian, ability, acmatic, advantageous,
     all-absorbing, allographic, alphabetic, apical, arch, art center,
     ascender, assets, auspicious, available means, back, balance,
     banner, basic, bastard type, beard, belly, beneficial, benevolent,
     bevel, black letter, body, bon, bonny, bracket capital, braw,
     bueno, cap, capacity, capital city, capital gains distribution,
     capital goods, capital structure, capitalization, cardinal, case,
     cash, central, champion, chief, choice, circulating capital, cock,
     cogent, commendable, consummate, controlling, cornice, corpus,
     counter, county seat, county site, county town, crown, crowning,
     dandy, descender, devices, disposable resources, dominant, elegant,
     em, en, equity capital, essential, estimable, excellent, expedient,
     extraordinary, face, fair, famous, fat-faced type, favorable, feet,
     finances, financial, fine, first, first-class, first-rate,
     first-string, fiscal, fixed capital, flagrant, floating capital,
     focal, font, foremost, fund, fundamental, funds, garment center,
     glaring, good, goodly, grand, graphemic, great, grist, groove,
     gross, head, headmost, healthy, hegemonic, helpful, highest,
     holdings, ideographic, important, initial, italic, kind, laudable,
     leading, letter, lettered, lexigraphic, ligature, liquid assets,
     literal, logogrammatic, logographic, logotype, lower case,
     lower-case, magisterial, main, major, majuscule,
     manufacturing center, master, matchless, maximal, maximum, mean,
     means, medical center, meridian, meridional, method, metropolis,
     minuscular, minuscule, monetary, money, moneyed capital, nice,
     nick, noble, number one, numismatic, nummary, outstanding,
     overmost, overriding, overruling, paramount, pecuniary, peerless,
     pi, pica, pictographic, pleasant, point, power, predominant,
     preeminent, premier, preponderant, prevailing, primal, primary,
     prime, principal, print, profitable, property, railroad center,
     rank, ranking, recourses, regal, resorts, resource, resources,
     ripping, roman, royal, ruling, sans serif, savings, script, seat,
     seat of government, select, shank, shipping center, shire town,
     shopping center, shoulder, skillful, small cap, small capital,
     smashing, sound, sovereign, splendid, stamp, star, stellar, stem,
     sterling, stock, summital, sumptuary, super, superb, supereminent,
     superior, supply, supreme, tip-top, top, top-hole, top-notch,
     topflight, topmost, topping, tourist center, trade center,
     transliterated, type, type body, type class, type lice, typecase,
     typeface, typefounders, typefoundry, ultimate, uncial, underlying,
     upmost, upper case, upper-case, uppermost, urban center, useful,
     valid, venture capital, vertical, very good, virtuous, vital, ways,
     ways and means, wealth, wherewith, wherewithal, working capital,
     zenithal
  
  

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

  CAPITAL, political economy, commerce. In political economy, it is that 
  portion of the produce of a country, which may be made directly available 
  either to support the human species or to the facilitating of production. 
       2. In commerce, as applied to individuals, it is those objects, whether 
  consisting of money or other property, which a merchant, trader, or other 
  person adventures in an undertaking, or which he contributes to the common 
  stock of a partnership. 2 Bouv. Inst. n. 1458. 
       3. It signifies money put out at interest. 
       4. The fund of a trading company or corporation is also called capital, 
  but in this sense the word stock is generally added to it; thus we say the 
  capital stock of the Bank of North America. 
  
  

From THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY ((C)1911 Released April 15 1993) [devils]:

  CAPITAL, n.  The seat of misgovernment.  That which provides the fire,
  the pot, the dinner, the table and the knife and fork for the
  anarchist; the part of the repast that himself supplies is the
  disgrace before meat.  _Capital Punishment_, a penalty regarding the
  justice and expediency of which many worthy persons -- including all
  the assassins -- entertain grave misgivings.