capitalization

American  

[kap-i-tl-uh-zay-shuhn] / ˌkæp ɪ tl əˈzeɪ ʃən /

noun

• capitalizations
  plural

1. the act or process of capitalizing.

2. the authorized or outstanding stocks and bonds of a corporation.

3. Accounting.

   1. the total investment of the owner or owners in a business enterprise.

   2. the total corporate liability.

   3. the total arrived at after addition of liabilities.

4. conversion into stocks or bonds.

5. the act of computing the present value of future periodical payments.

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capitalization British  

/ ˌkæpɪtəlaɪˈzeɪʃən /

noun

1. 1. the act of capitalizing

   2. the sum so derived

2. accounting the par value of the total share capital issued by a company, including the loan capital and sometimes reserves

3. the act of estimating the present value of future payments, earnings, etc

4. the act of writing or printing in capital letters

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Usage

What does capitalization mean? Capitalization is the act of using capital letters. A capital letter (A, B, C, etc.) is a letter of the alphabet that is bigger than the lower case version (e.g., c, o, s) and sometimes styled differently as well (e.g., a, b, q). In English, we use capital letters for several reasons. The most common reasons we use capitalization in English are to begin a sentence and to indicate a proper noun. We capitalize the first letter of the first word of a sentence to show that this is the beginning of the sentence, as in Who took my wallet?This includes complete sentences that are used in quotations, as in Mom said, “We are going to the mall.”We also use capitalization for proper nouns, that is a particular person, place, or thing, like James, New York, or the Library of Congress. Sometimes, though, companies name themselves or their products without any capitalization or with capitalization in the middle of the word (sometimes called camel case), as in adidas, eBay, and WikiAnswers. The pronoun I is always capitalized, no matter where it is used in a sentence, as in He went to the park, but I stayed home.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• capitalizations
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of capitalization

First recorded in 1855–60; capitalize + -ation

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Explanation

Capitalization means using capital, or upper-case, letters. Capitalization of place names, family names, and days of the week are all standard in English. Using capital letters at the start of a sentence and capitalizing all the letters in a word for emphasis are both examples of capitalization. Capitalization also means the act of gaining an advantage from some opportunity: "Her capitalization of the voters' frustration made it much easier for her to win the election." The earliest meaning, however, was purely financial, from the sense of capitalize that means "convert financial assets to capital."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

capitalization capitalizations

The S&P 500 lost an estimated $2.9 trillion in market capitalization, the largest one-day wipe out of market value on record, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 5, 2026

The S&P 500 lost an estimated $2.9 trillion in market capitalization, the largest one-day loss of market value on record.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 5, 2026

Google’s market capitalization shed $500 billion in the stock’s worst day ever, dragging down indexes that fell further as Intel and Amazon reported results that concerned investors.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 1, 2026

Intel is on track to lose $140 billion in market capitalization on Friday as a personal-computer slowdown spooks investors.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 30, 2026

Punctuation, together with other graphical indicators such as italics, capitalization, and spacing, developed over the history of printed language to do two things.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker

The strategists recommend quality stocks with large market capitalizations, adopters of artificial intelligence and the S&P 500 over international stocks.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 24, 2026

The Keeley Small Cap Fund typically buys shares of companies with market capitalizations ranging from $100 million to $2.5 billion at initial investment.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 22, 2026

Shares of Nvidia, which remains the largest company market capitalizations, are trading about 5% lower than the day Burry announced his short.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 1, 2026

Because the Dow is a price-weighted index—meaning individual stock prices rather than market capitalizations determine the weighting of each company—few funds choose to replicate its composition.

From Barron's ● Jun. 24, 2026

I'm agin' these big capitalizations, and that's just why I asked you for the information.

From Loaded Dice by Ellery H. Clark

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