Capacities

How to spell capacities

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce capacities

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does capacities mean?

1. nounThe mental or physical abilities and powers that people or things possess.
2. nounThe maximum amounts that containers, venues, or systems can hold or produce.
3. nounThe various official roles or positions in which someone acts.

Capacities in a sentence

• The new graduates were hired for their leadership capacities.

• The two stadiums have very different seating capacities.

• She advised the board in several different capacities over the decade.

• Human mental capacities vary widely from one person to the next.

• The factory increased its production capacities over the past year.

• He served the company in both legal and financial capacities.

Where does capacities come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the plural of capacity, which English took in the late 1300s from the Old French capacite, itself drawn from the Latin capacitatem, the accusative form of capacitas. That Latin noun meant 'the ability to hold or contain' and was built on the adjective capax, 'able to hold much', which in turn came from the verb capere, 'to take or seize'. The same capere root quietly underlies a whole family of English words, including capture, capable, receive, and accept, all sharing the idea of taking in or holding. The literal sense of physical roominess (how much a vessel can contain) broadened over time into figurative senses such as mental ability and an official role or position. The spelling keeps the soft c of the Latin root, so the ending is -cities, not the -sities that the sound might tempt a writer toward.

How the word is built

• capac- (from Latin capax: able to hold)
• -ity (noun-forming suffix)
• -es (plural, with y changing to ies)