—used with a following capital letter to emphasize or qualify a preceding word
not an accident but murder with a capital Mdesired romance with a capital R
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Capital and Capitol: Which One to Use Where
What a pair these are: they sound identical and look nearly identical and both have meanings that relate to government. Mastering their use, however, is simple.
The key is this: capitol, the one with an "o," is very limited in use. It appears in the term Capitol Hill, and is used to refer to one very particular and famous building, to some other similar buildings, and, occasionally, to a group of buildings that includes those similar buildings. For all other meanings, the word you want is capital.
This means that in a state's capital city is a building or group of buildings properly referred to with the word capitol, with an "o." In this use capitol is synonymous with statehouse: both refer to the building or group of buildings where a state legislature meets. The phrase capital city utilizes capital because it refers to a city, not to a building or group of buildings.
Capitol with a capital "C" refers to the particular building in Washington, D.C. where the U.S. Congress meets. It often appears before other nouns in phrases like the Capitol building and Capitol police, and is very frequently used in the term Capitol Hill, which refers both to the legislative branch of the United States government as well as to the location of the Capitol building. The Capitol, like many state capitol buildings, has a rounded dome that is somewhat reminiscent of the top of an "o," which may help some remember the "o" spelling. Note that the word capital as used to describe an uppercase letter, like in the phrase capital "C", utilizes capital.
The word capital has three distinct homographs, two for noun uses and one for adjective uses. Readers should consult those entries for the various meanings of capital, but can be assured that they all end in al, rather than ol.
AdjectiveIn several district capital towns I visited, the most obvious result of increased local autonomy was a showy new government office complex … Mel White, National Geographic, November 2008In a nearby deli, the specials board announces in desperately bold capital letters, "WILL TRADE FOOD FOR SOX/PATS TICKETS"! Julia Glass, Gourmet, February 2007Few competent local lawyers are willing to take on capital defendants for $20 an hour … Jeffrey Rosen, New Republic, 4 Oct. 1993 His handwritten capital S's look a lot like lowercase s's. Homicide that occurs during the course of an attempted kidnapping is a capital crime in some states. Noun (1)… he must have poured a lot of energy into observing the men and women around him, since they would provide the literary capital he would draw on for many years to come in three major books. Edmund White, New York Review of Books, 12 Feb. 2009Myrtle Beach claims to be the nation's golf capital, and given its 123 golf courses, it is hard to dispute the title. Elizabeth Olson, New York Times, 30 Sept. 2003The two brothers-in-law pooled their resources and scrounged capital from relatives. Thorne asked several family members, including his father, to back them, but only his uncle, Samuel Thorne, came through with the money. Jennet Conant, Tuxedo Park, 2002Anna is no bumpkin: she and her sisters have been dragged thriftily around the capitals of Europe by their parents, a pair of academics who have always displayed the proper American reverence for garlic and old stones, and occasionally even sprung for a fancy meal. Andrea Lee, New Yorker, 6 May 2002This was the incident book, and there, sure enough, was the entry detailing Moretsi's injury, the words spelled out in capitals in a barely literate hand … Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, 1998In a sense, such stories are his capital, and if he's lucky he may be able to parlay them into a business opportunity … Bill Barich, New Yorker, 7 May 1990Noun (2)The transition from Greece to Rome is marked, in a propylaeum space, by a huge Ionic column's base and capital, with a space between the broad part of the column below and the narrowing segment above. Garry Wills, New York Review of Books, 31 May 2007According to the scrapbooks of nineteenth-century tourists, there's room for a hundred men to stand on the capital of one of these columns. That was the kind of culturally insensitive thing tourists used to do. P. J. O'Rourke, Atlantic, September 2002See More
Word History
Etymology
Adjective
Middle English, "of the head, for the head (as a medication), chief, principal, (of a letter) larger than the other letters on the page (as an initial letter), deadly, mortal (of punishment, an enemy)," borrowed from Anglo-French & Medieval Latin; Anglo-French, "of the head, chief, large (of a letter), mortal (of a sin)," borrowed from Medieval Latin capitālis "of or for the head, mortal, entailing loss of life (of a penalty or offense), initial (of a letter), chief, principal (of a city or religious house)," going back to Latin, "entailing loss of life (of a punishment or crime), deadly, implacable (of an enemy)," from capit-, caput "head, source, leading person, chief city of a state or province, a person's life when endangered or the target of a curse, one's life as forfeit for a crime" + -ālis-al entry 1 — more at head entry 1
Note: As a derivative, classical Latin capitālis reflects only extended senses of caput, as a metonym for a human life in regard to its exposure to danger or to forfeiture as a punishment; capitālis in the literal meaning "of the head" is only attested in post-classical Latin.
Noun (1)
(sense 1) borrowed from Italian capitale "real or monetary assets, personal or corporate wealth," going back to Medieval Latin capitāle "movable property, riches," noun derivative from neuter of capitālis "of the head, chief, principal"; (sense 2) derivative of capital entry 1 (sense 1), after Middle French capitale (by ellipsis from lettre capitale) or Medieval Latin capitālis (by ellipsis from littera capitālis); (sense 3) derivative of capital entry 1 (sense 2a), after Middle French capitale (by ellipsis from ville capitale) — more at capital entry 1
Note: The Italian word capitale was diffused into other western European languages due to the European significance of the Florentine banking houses. The meaning "movable property, patrimony, riches" of capitāle is attested in Latin from the ninth century (in the half-vernacular form catallum, from Chartres) and in Romance vernaculars: in the Gallo-Romance area (Old French chatel, in the dialect of Picardy and French Flanders catel—see cattle, chattel; as Old Occitan capdal), in Iberia (Spanish caudal "property, abundance"), northern Italy (Upper Italian cavear [Genoa] "patrimony in money, riches," cavià [Asti], cavedale [Milan]—see Lessico etimologico italiano); in Tuscany, capitale. The semantic logic behind a derived nominal sense "property" from an adjectival sense "of the head, chief, principal" (if these are even the relevant meanings) is less than transparent. Note, however, the use of caput to mean "head of cattle," a form of wealth, in the early Germanic laws (Lex Salica, Lex Allamanorum—see Niemeyer, Mediae Latinitatis lexicon minus).
Noun (2)
Middle English capitale, borrowed from Anglo-French capital, capitel, borrowed from Late Latin capitellum, from Latin capit-, caput "head" + -ellum, neuter of -ellus, diminutive suffix, originally with noun stems ending in -ul-, -r- and -n- — more at head entry 1