CAPITAL LETTER • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Capital letter

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/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.

See images of 'Capital letter'

Etymology of 'Capital letter'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Capital letter" Quotes from Famous Books

... Written Composition. "Festina lente." "Hasten slowly." When a French student takes his college entrance examinations, he is plucked if he misspells one word, misplaces one capital letter, or makes a single mistake in punctuation. Lord Bacon somewhere says: "Let us proceed slowly that we may sooner make ...

— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller

... and significant part of a capital letter is the beard. It is an automatic trick, and always repays careful examination. It may be a spurred, ticked or dotted beard, but in any case the initial stroke must be carefully examined, whatever form it may assume, for the oft-emphasized ...

— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn

... we to proceed? Shall we erect the mystery into an Unknowable, like Spencer, and call ourselves Agnostics with a capital letter, like Huxley? Shall we follow Frederic Harrison, making an inadequate divinity out of our impotence? I have read the books of the "Positivists", and attended their imitation church in London, but I did not ...

— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... as a Christian emblem certainly, but from time immemorial as the form in which the copper ingot of Katanga is moulded—this is met with quite commonly, and is called Handiple Mahandi. Our capital letter I (called Vigera) is the large form of the bars of copper, each about 60 or 70 lbs. weight, seen all over Central Africa ...

— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... seen in the above examples that a certain clue is given by writing the syllable with which the proverb commences in a capital letter. This need not be done in playing the game where elder children only take part, but it is an assistance for the younger ones. As to the arrangement of syllables, it will be seen that the above are assorted in alphabetical order, and this plan will be found most easy ...

— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

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