CAPITAL LETTER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does capital letter mean? 

• CAPITAL LETTER (noun)
  The noun CAPITAL LETTER 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: CAPITAL LETTER used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CAPITAL LETTER (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 ("capital letter" 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 "capital letter"):

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