capital city
/ˌkæpɪtəl ˈsɪti/
Detailed reference entry for the English word "capital-city", 12-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "capital-city" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "capital-city" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
The verdict
“capital city” is outside the top-ranked English vocabulary, used as a noun - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 12
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A city that is a seat of government.
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See how capital city compares against similar English words.
Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | capital city |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˌkæpɪtəl ˈsɪti/ |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “capital city” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for capital city is 12 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˌkæpɪtəl ˈsɪti/. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for capital city in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is capital city, spelled C-A-P-I-T-A-L- -C-I-T-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A city that is a seat of government.
- 2A city (or cities) much larger or more important to a country than all others, regardless of the actual seat of government (cf., Moscow and Saint Petersburg regardless of moves of the Russian government; Amsterdam despite the Dutch government having been situated in The Hague since 1588).
- 3The major metropolitan areas of Australia (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide), all of which happen to be state capitals, and by extension the major metropolitan areas of other countries; note that other state capitals Hobart, Darwin, and national capital Canberra are often excluded.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Cite this page
Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY-SA). Copy the citation:
PlainSpell, “capital city, English word data” (May 6, 2026). Derived from Wiktionary (kaikki.org, CC BY-SA) and an open word-frequency list. https://plainspell.com/en/word/capital-city
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Using “capital city”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is C-A-P-I-T-A-L- -C-I-T-Y - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˌkæpɪtəl ˈsɪti/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: