capacious

[ kuh-pey-shuhs ]

adjective

1. capable of holding much; spacious or roomy:

   a capacious storage bin.

   Synonyms: large, spacious, roomy, ample

capacious

/ kəˈpeɪʃəs /

adjective

1. capable of holding much; roomy; spacious

Derived Forms

• caˈpaciously, adverb
• caˈpaciousness, noun

Other Words From

• ca·pacious·ly adverb
• ca·pacious·ness noun
• unca·pacious adjective
• unca·pacious·ly adverb
• unca·pacious·ness noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of capacious¹

First recorded in 1605–15; from Latin capāc-, the stem of the adjective capax “able to take, take in, contain,” from capere, “to take, seize” + -ious ( def )

Word History and Origins

Origin of capacious¹

C17: from Latin capāx, from Latin capere to take

Example Sentences

Its premise is that “the modern liberal ordering of the world is exhausted” — meaning not just liberalism in the American political sense but the more capacious philosophical one.

From Vox

Lithium-11, with its capacious halo, sits right next to the drip line.

From Science News

There is no easy redemption here, but these people feel real and capacious and, despite their circumstances, dynamic.

From Washington Post

Faced with such capacious ignorance, our only rational course is to use every means possible, regardless of cost, to try to save all species of life, knowing that if we fail to save enough of the essential ones, we will have no future.

From Nautilus

I likely became a novelist, in part, because novels are deep, capacious.

From Time

As we were getting ready to repair to his capacious table, we were joined by Claude Lanzmann, the maker of the film Shoah.

From The Daily Beast

The final artifact is a live elephant whose capacious appetite is slowly eating into the estate.

From The Daily Beast

He was simply an artist whose insatiable ambition manifested in “a frighteningly capacious stomach.”

From The Daily Beast

Yet I doubt that she will become a capacious judge with wide-ranging interests and intense curiosity.

From The Daily Beast

But George H.W. Bush is a man of capacious and unconditional love, so I imagine that carried him through the day.

From The Daily Beast

The port is not only capacious, but has very few shoals or dangers in it.

From Project Gutenberg

They are higher, more capacious, and finer buildings than those of Benares, with the exception of the Bisvishas.

From Project Gutenberg

The building is cruciform in shape, and has a fine interior—is lofty, capacious, and cathedral-like.

From Project Gutenberg

He went to a cupboard, and produced a stumpy, but capacious bottle, and three glasses.

From Project Gutenberg

Loftily poised in ether capacious, Strongly resembling a gem carbonaceous.

From Project Gutenberg