UPPERCASE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does uppercase mean? 

• UPPERCASE (noun)
  The noun UPPERCASE has 1 sense:

1. one of the large alphabetic characters used as the first letter in writing or printing proper names and sometimes for emphasis

  Familiarity information: UPPERCASE used as a noun is very rare.

• UPPERCASE (adjective)
  The adjective UPPERCASE has 1 sense:

1. relating to capital letters which were kept in the top half of a compositor's type case

  Familiarity information: UPPERCASE used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UPPERCASE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

One of the large alphabetic characters used as the first letter in writing or printing proper names and sometimes for emphasis

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

capital; capital letter; majuscule; upper-case letter; uppercase

Context example:

printers once kept the type for capitals and for small letters in separate cases; capitals were kept in the upper half of the type case and so became known as upper-case letters

Hypernyms ("uppercase" is a kind of...):

character; graph; grapheme; graphic symbol (a written symbol that is used to represent speech)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "uppercase"):

small cap; small capital (a character having the form of an upper-case letter but the same height as lower-case letters)

Antonym:

lowercase (the characters that were once kept in bottom half of a compositor's type case)

• UPPERCASE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Relating to capital letters which were kept in the top half of a compositor's type case

Context example:

uppercase letters; X and Y and Z etc

Similar:

capital; great; majuscule (uppercase)

Also:

majuscule (of or relating to a style of writing characterized by somewhat rounded capital letters; 4th to 8th centuries)

Antonym:

lowercase (relating to small (not capitalized) letters that were kept in the lower half of a compositor's type case)

 Context examples 

Uppercase abbreviations assigned by the International Network of Food Data Systems.

(INFOODS, NCI Thesaurus)

The worldwide standard for the code numbers used by computers to represent all the uppercase and lowercase Latin letters, numbers, punctuation, and other symbols.

(ASCII, NCI Thesaurus)