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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.
Synonyms
Examples of capital in a Sentence
Mel White, National Geographic, November 2008
In a nearby deli, the specials board announces in desperately bold capital letters, "WILL TRADE FOOD FOR SOX/PATS TICKETS"!
—Julia Glass, Gourmet, February 2007
Few 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. 2009
Myrtle 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. 2003
The 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, 2002
Anna 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 2002
This 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, 1998
In 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 1990
during the 1980s Silicon Valley became the capital of the computer industry
invested nearly all of their capital in the new business
Noun (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 2007
According 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 2002
John Tamny, Forbes, 11 Feb. 2024
And as Romano observed, the court can take months to act on a clemency request in a non-capital case.
—Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle, 4 Aug. 2022
William Mullane, The Arizona Republic, 12 June 2024
The nearly 80-year-old former first lady and reigning grande dame of the capital sat for a portrait draped in a crocheted shawl, her curls peeking out from under her signature turban.
—Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times, 11 June 2024
See all Example Sentences for capital 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'capital.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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Cite this Entry
“Capital.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capital. Accessed 27 Jun. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
capital
1 of 3 adjective
capital
2 of 3 nouncapital
3 of 3 nounAdjective
Middle English capital "of the head, principal, causing death," from early French (same meaning), from Latin capitalis (same meaning); from caput "head" — related to achieve, cadet, cape entry 1, captain, chief
Noun
Middle English capitale (same meaning), from early French (same meaning), from Latin capitellum "small head, top of a column," from caput "head"
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