different between primary vs capital

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin pr?m?rius (“of the first (rank); chief, principal; excellent”), from pr?mus (first; whence the English adjective prime) + -?rius (whence the English suffix -ary); compare the French primaire, primer, and premier.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?p?a?m??i/
• (US) enPR: pr??m?r-?, IPA^(key): /?p?a??m??i/ or enPR: pr??m?-r?, IPA^(key): /?p?a?m??i/
• (General New Zealand) IPA^(key): /?p??em??i/, /?p??em?i/

Adjective

primary (comparative more primary, superlative most primary)

1. first or earliest in a group or series.
   • 1659, John Pearson, Exposition of the Creed

     the church of Christ, in its primary institution

   • , Book II, Chapter VIII

     These I call original, or primary, qualities of body.

2. main; principal; chief; placed ahead of others.

   Preferred stock has primary claim on dividends, ahead of common stock.

3. (geology) Earliest formed; fundamental.
4. (chemistry) Illustrating, possessing, or characterized by, some quality or property in the first degree; having undergone the first stage of substitution or replacement.
5. (medicine) Relating to the place where a disorder or disease started to occur.
6. (medicine) Relating to day-to-day care provided by health professionals such as nurses, general practitioners, dentists etc.

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• first
• primus inter pares

Noun

primary (plural primaries)

1. A primary election; a preliminary election to select a political candidate of a political party.
2. The first year of grade school.
3. A base or fundamental component; something that is irreducible.
4. The most massive component of a gravitationally bound system, such as a planet in relation to its satellites.
5. A primary school.
   • 2001, David Woods, Martyn Cribb, Effective LEAs and school improvement

     Excellence in Cities offers a further development of this approach, whereby secondary schools operate with small clusters of primaries as mini-EAZs.

6. (ornithology) Any flight feather attached to the manus (hand) of a bird.
7. A primary colour.
   • 2003, Julie A Jacko, Andrew Sears, The human-computer interaction handbook

     By adding and subtracting the three primaries, cyan, yellow, and magenta are produced. These are called subtractive primaries.

8. (military) The first stage of a thermonuclear weapon, which sets off a fission explosion to help trigger a fusion reaction in the weapon's secondary stage.
9. (aviation) A radar return from an aircraft (or other object) produced solely by the reflection of the radar beam from the aircraft's skin, without additional information from the aircraft's transponder.
10. (medicine) Primary site of disease; original location or source of the disease.

11. (electronics) A directly driven inductive coil, as in a transformer or induction motor that is magnetically coupled to a secondary

Translations

References

• primary on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Verb

primary (third-person singular simple present primaries, present participle primarying, simple past and past participle primaried)

1. (US, politics, transitive, intransitive) To challenge (an incumbent sitting politician) for their political party's nomination to run for re-election, through running a challenger campaign in a primary election, especially one that is more ideologically extreme.
2. (US, intransitive, transitive) To take part in a primary election.

Further reading

• primary in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• primary in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

English

Alternative forms

• capitall (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English capital, borrowed from Latin capit?lis (“of the head”) (in sense “head of cattle”), from caput (“head”) (English cap). Use in trade and finance originated in Medieval economies when a common but expensive transaction involved trading heads of cattle.

Compare chattel and kith and kine (“all one’s possessions”), which also use “cow” to mean “property”.

This etymology is incomplete. You can help Wiktionary by elaborating on the origins of this term.

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /?kæ.p?.t?l/
• Homophone: capitol

Noun

capital (countable and uncountable, plural capitals)

1. (uncountable, economics) Already-produced durable goods available for use as a factor of production, such as steam shovels (equipment) and office buildings (structures).
2. (uncountable, business, finance, insurance) Money and wealth. The means to acquire goods and services, especially in a non-barter system.

3. (countable) A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.

4. (countable) The most important city in the field specified.
   • 2010 September, Charlie Brennan, "Active Athletes", St. Louis magazine, ISSN 1090-5723, volume 16, issue 9, page 83:

     Hollywood is the film capital, New York the theater capital, Las Vegas the gambling capital.

5. (countable) An uppercase letter.
6. (countable, architecture) The uppermost part of a column.
7. (uncountable) Knowledge; awareness; proficiency.

8. (countable, by extension) The chief or most important thing.

Usage notes

The homophone capitol refers only to a building, usually one that houses the legislative branch of a government, and often one located in a capital city.

Synonyms

• (An uppercase letter): caps (in the plural), majuscule

Antonyms

• (An uppercase letter): minuscule

Translations

Adjective

capital (not comparable)

1. Of prime importance.
   • 1708, Francis Atterbury, Fourteen Sermons Preach'd on Several Occasions : Preface

     a capital article in religion
2. Chief, in a political sense, as being the seat of the general government of a state or nation.

3. (comparable, Britain, dated) Excellent.

4. Involving punishment by death.
   • 2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin 2003, p. 517:

     Some 1,600 priests were deported, for example, while the total number of capital victims of the military commissions down to 1799 was only around 150.

5. Uppercase.

   Antonym: lower-case

   1. used to emphasise greatness or absoluteness
6. Of or relating to the head.

Translations

Derived terms

Related terms

References

• Douglas Harper (2001–2021) , “capital”, in Online Etymology Dictionary
• capital at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• palatic, placita

Asturian

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin capit?lis.

Adjective

capital (epicene, plural capitales)

1. capital

Noun

capital f (plural capitales)

1. capital city (city designated as seat of government)

capital m (plural capitales)

1. capital (money)

Catalan

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin capit?lis.

Pronunciation

• (Balearic, Central) IPA^(key): /k?.pi?tal/
• (Valencian) IPA^(key): /ka.pi?tal/

Adjective

capital (feminine capitala, masculine plural capitals, feminine plural capitales)

1. capital

Derived terms

• pena capital
• set pecats capitals

Noun

capital f (plural capitals)

1. capital (city)

Noun

capital m (plural capitals)

1. capital (finance)

Derived terms

• capitalisme
• capitalista
• capitalitzar

Further reading

• “capital” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.

French

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin capit?lis. Doublet of cheptel.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ka.pi.tal/

Noun

capital m (plural capitaux)

1. capital (money and wealth)

Adjective

capital (feminine singular capitale, masculine plural capitaux, feminine plural capitales)

1. capital (important)

   La peine capitale est abolie en France depuis les années 1980.

Derived terms

Related terms

• capitale
• capitaliser
• capitalisme

Further reading

• “capital” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Anagrams

• plaçait

Portuguese

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin capit?lis. Doublet of cabedal and caudal.

Pronunciation

• (Portugal) IPA^(key): /k?.pi.?ta?/
• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /ka.pi.?taw/, [k?.p?.?t?ä??]

Noun

capital f (plural capitais)

2. (geopolitics) capital; capital city (place where the seat of a government is located)
4. (figuratively) capital (the most important place associated with something)

Noun

capital m (plural capitais)

2. (finances) capital (money that can be used to acquire goods and services)
4. (figuratively) anything of prime importance

Derived terms

• capitalismo
• capitalista

Adjective

capital m or f (plural capitais, comparable)

2. capital (of prime importance)
4. (law) capital (involving punishment by death)
6. (rare, anatomy) capital (relating to the head)

Related terms

• cabeça
• cabedal
• cabo
• caput
• caudal
• per capita

Romanian

Etymology

Borrowed from French capital, Latin capit?lis.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ka.pi?tal/

Noun

capital n (plural capitaluri)

1. (economics, business) capital

Declension

Adjective

capital m or n (feminine singular capital?, masculine plural capitali, feminine and neuter plural capitale)

1. capital, important

Declension

Romansch

Alternative forms

• (Rumantsch Grischun, Vallader) chapital
• (Puter) chapitêl

Etymology

From Latin capit?lis, from caput (“head”).

Noun

capital m (plural capitals)

1. (Sursilvan, Sutsilvan, Surmiran) capital

Related terms

• capitala, tgapitala

Spanish

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin capit?lis. Doublet of caudal.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kapi?tal/, [ka.pi?t?al]
• Rhymes: -al

Adjective

capital (plural capitales)

1. capital (important)

Derived terms

• pecado capital

Noun

capital m (plural capitales)

1. capital (finance)

Derived terms

Noun

capital f (plural capitales)

1. capital (city)

Further reading

• “capital” in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014.