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PlainSpell

cap

/kæp/noun, verb

cap is spelled C-A-P: 3 letters and one syllable. It appears 32 times per million words in written English, the 2,941st most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, cap means “A close-fitting hat, either brimless or peaked” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of cap is caps.

How many letters and syllables are in cap?

Letters3: C-A-P
Syllables1
In writing32 times per million words; the 2,941st most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search
Rhymes with
Same letters

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How common is cap?

Cap appears 32 times per million words in written English, the 2,941st most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce cap?

  • US /kæp/
  • US [kʰæp]
  • British /kap/

Cap has one syllable.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-cap.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

What rhymes with cap?

11 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as cap from its last stressed vowel (/æp/):

Spelled with the same letters in another order: pac.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of cap

  • caps plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • 🧢
  • capping participle, present
  • capped participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does cap mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    A close-fitting hat, either brimless or peaked.

    The children were all wearing caps to protect them from the sun.

  2. 2

    A special hat to indicate rank, occupation, etc.

  3. 3

    An academic mortarboard.

  4. 4

    A protective cover or seal.

    He took the cap off the bottle and splashed himself with some cologne.

  5. 5

    A crown for covering a tooth.

    He had golden caps on his teeth.

  6. 6

    The summit of a mountain, etc.

    There was snow on the cap of the mountain.

  7. 7

    An artificial upper limit or ceiling.

    We should put a cap on the salaries, to keep them under control.

  8. 8

    The top part of a mushroom.

  9. 9

    Capitalization.

  10. 10

    informalA capital letter.

  11. 11

    A capacitor.

    parasitic caps

  12. 12

    colloquialClipping of capture; a recording or screenshot.

    Anyone have a cap of the games last night?

  13. 13

    slangA capsule of a drug.

  14. 14

    colloquialA capitalist.

  15. 15

    A capillary.

  16. 16

    A caption.

  17. 17

    obsoleteA wooden drinking-bowl with two handles.

verb

  1. 1

    To cover or seal with a cap.

  2. 2

    To award a cap as a mark of distinction.

  3. 3

    To lie over or on top of something.

  4. 4

    slangTo paint over someone else's piece or tag.

  5. 5

    To surpass or outdo.

  6. 6

    To set (or reach) an upper limit on something.

    to cap wages

  7. 7

    To conclude; to make something even more wonderful at the end.

    That really capped my day.

  8. 8

    To select a player to play for a specified side.

  9. 9

    informalTo convert text to uppercase.

  10. 10

    To take a screenshot or to record a copy of a video.

  11. 11

    To capture an objective, such as a flag or checkpoint.

  12. 12

    To capitulate (cause to capitulate) an opponent.

noun

as CAP
  1. 1

    Initialism of conservation action plan.

  2. 2

    Initialism of catabolite activator protein.

  3. 3

    Initialism of community-acquired pneumonia.

  4. 4

    Initialism of consistency, availability, partition-tolerance, three irreconcilable guarantees in distributed systems, a result known as Brewer's theorem.

  5. 5

    Initialism of combat air patrol.

  6. 6

    Initialism of change acceleration process.

  7. 7

    Initialism of cold atmospheric plasma.

  8. 8

    Initialism of colors and placements.

noun

as Cap
  1. 1

    informalClipping of Capricorn.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Cap in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchbonnet, casquette, tuque (head covering), chapeau, mortier (academic mortarboard), capsule (protective cover or seal)
GermanMütze (head covering), Dienstmütze (head-covering to indicate rank etc), Obergrenze (artificial upper limit), Hut (top part of a mushroom)
Portugueseboné, barrete, quepe (head covering), chapéu, chapeleta, píleo (top part of a mushroom)
Spanishgorra, cachucha (head covering), fulminante (gunpowder charge for a toy gun), detonante (small amount of explosive used as detonator)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

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