Capacity

How to spell capacity

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce capacity

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does capacity mean?

1. nounThe maximum amount that something can contain or produce.
2. nounA person's mental power, or the role or position in which someone acts.

Capacity in a sentence

• The stadium was filled to capacity for the final match.

• She signed the contract in her capacity as managing director.

• The fuel tank has a capacity of sixty litres.

• He has a remarkable capacity for remembering names and faces.

Where does capacity come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin capacitas, meaning 'roominess' or 'the ability to hold', which was formed from the adjective capax, 'able to hold a great deal'. That adjective in turn grew from the verb capere, meaning 'to take' or 'to hold', a remarkably productive root that also gave English 'capture', 'capable', 'receive', and 'reception'. English took the word in during the late 1400s through Old French capacite, first describing how much a container could physically hold. From that literal sense of volume the meaning broadened to cover mental ability, official roles, and the maximum a system can manage. The shared capere root explains why 'capacity', 'capable', and 'capacious' all share that telltale 'capac' stretch, and remembering the verb 'to hold' anchors the single c and single p in the spelling.

How the word is built

• capac- (from capax: able to hold, roomy, from capere: to take, hold)
• -ity (noun suffix)