Capitalism

How to spell capitalism

10 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce capitalism

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does capitalism mean?

1. nounAn economic system in which trade, industry, and the means of production are largely privately owned and run for profit.

Capitalism in a sentence

• The lecture compared capitalism with state-planned economies.

• Critics argue that unregulated capitalism widens the gap between rich and poor.

Where does capitalism come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin caput, meaning 'head', which gave rise to capitalis, 'relating to the head' and so 'chief' or 'principal'. By the late medieval period 'capital' had come to mean the principal sum of money in a business, the wealth that 'heads' a venture, as opposed to the interest or income it produced. From that financial sense English built 'capitalist' in the 1700s for someone who owns such wealth, and the abstract noun 'capitalism' followed in the 1800s to name the whole economic system based on private ownership of capital and production for profit. It spread rapidly through political and economic writing of the nineteenth century, especially in debates between defenders of free markets and their socialist critics. The spelling trap is the run of unstressed vowels in the middle, 'cap-i-tal-ism', where each could be misheard as a schwa; remembering the visible word 'capital' inside it keeps the spelling steady.

How the word is built

• capit- (from Latin caput: head)
• -al (relating to)
• -ism (system or doctrine)