capital
cap·it·al/ˈkæpɪtəl/noun, adjective, interjection
capital is spelled C-A-P-I-T-A-L, 3 syllables: cap·it·al. The wrong spelling people search most is captial: about 1,190 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 52 of all searches for the word. Capital is a noun meaning “Money and wealth: the means to acquire or produce goods and services, especially in a non-barter system”. The plural of capital is capitals.
How many letters and syllables are in capital?
| Letters | 7: C-A-P-I-T-A-L |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3: cap·it·al |
| In writing | 102 times per million words; the 1,048th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, captial, about 1,190 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Pairs people search | |
| Sounds like |
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); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell capital?
Capital is spelled C-A-P-I-T-A-L. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 52 of the searches for capital in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is capital?
Capital appears 102 times per million words in written English, the 1,048th most frequent word form in the list. The list counts every capitalisation together, so this includes Capital, the name.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce capital?
- UK /ˈkæpɪtəl/
- UK [ˈkʰæpɪtʰəl] ~ [ˈkʰæpɪtʰl̩]
- British /ˈkapɪtəl/
Capital has 3 syllables, split cap·it·al in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-capital.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with capital
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: capitol (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
Forms of capital
- capitals plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does capital mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
Money and wealth: the means to acquire or produce goods and services, especially in a non-barter system.
Near-synonym: assets
- 2
Already-produced durable goods available for use as a factor of production, such as tools and bulldozers (equipment) and office buildings (structures).
Near-synonym: assets
- 3
The capitalist class; investors considered collectively with respect to their societal (economic, political, cultural, etc.) influence.
The markets crashing symbolized capital’s discontent with the tax reforms passed.
- 4
A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.
Washington D.C. is the capital of the United States of America.
- 5
The most important city in the field specified.
Hollywood is the film capital, New York the theater capital, Las Vegas the gambling capital.
- 6
An uppercase letter.
- 7
Knowledge; awareness; proficiency.
Interpreters need a good amount of cultural capital in order to function efficiently in the profession.
- 8
The chief or most important thing.
- 9
The uppermost part of a column.
adjective
- 1
Of prime importance.
- 2
Chief (in a political sense, as being the seat of the general government of a state or nation).
London and Paris are capital cities.
- 3
UKdatedExcellent.
a capital fellow
- 4
Punishable by, or involving punishment by, death.
capital punishment; capital murder
- 5
Uppercase.
One begins a sentence with a capital letter.
- 6
Used to emphasise greatness or absoluteness.
You're a genius with a capital G!
- 7
Of or relating to the head.
interjection
- 1
datedslangused as an expression of approval, satisfaction, or delight.
That's an amazing idea! Capital!
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Capital in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | capital , excellent , capitale , majuscule , chapiteau |
| German | Kapital , großartig , Kapital- , Groß- , Kapitell , Haupt- |
| Portuguese | capital , excelente , maiúsculo , capitel , fundamental |
| Spanish | capital , capitel , versal, titular |
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.
Where does capital come from?
From Middle English capital, borrowed partly from Old French capital and partly from Latin capitālis (“of the head”) (in sense “head of cattle”), from caput (“head”) (English cap) + -ālis (suffix forming adjectives). Use in trade and finance originated in Medieval economies when a common but expensive transaction involved trading heads of cattle. The noun is from the adjective. In the fourth sense, displaced native Old English hēafodburg, equivalent to head + borough (“city”). Compare chattel and kith and kine (“all one’s possessions”), which also use “cow” to mean “property”.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).