Capitalist

How to spell capitalist

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce capitalist

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does capitalist mean?

1. nounA person who owns wealth or invested capital, or who supports an economy based on private ownership and profit.
2. adjectiveRelating to or characteristic of an economy based on private ownership and the pursuit of profit.

Capitalist in a sentence

• noun

  The factory owner was a self-made capitalist who reinvested every spare pound.

• adjective

  The lecture compared the planned economy with the capitalist model of the West.

• noun

  As a committed capitalist, she argued that free markets allocate resources best.

• adjective

  A capitalist society rewards private enterprise and competition.

Where does capitalist come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin caput, meaning 'head', which gave rise to the adjective capitalis, 'of the head' and so 'chief' or 'principal'. From the same root English inherited 'capital', which by the 1600s had come to mean a stock of accumulated wealth or money used to generate more money, the 'principal' fund of a business. The suffix -ist, denoting a person who holds a doctrine or engages in an activity, was added in French as capitaliste and borrowed into English in the late 1700s, originally describing someone who owns capital. Its modern political sense, a supporter of an economic system based on private ownership and profit, grew through the 1800s, sharpened by writers debating industrial society. The 'head' connection survives elsewhere too, in 'cattle' and 'chattel', once counted as movable wealth, and in 'per capita', literally 'by heads'. Remembering that 'capital' sits whole inside the word, before the plain -ist, helps fix the spelling.

How the word is built

• capital (from Latin capitalis: of the head, chief)
• -ist (one who practises or supports)