Capped

How to spell capped

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce capped

What does capped mean?

1. verbSet an upper limit on an amount, number, or rate.
2. verbCovered the top of something, or finished it off with a final touch.
3. verbSelected to represent a national or representative sports team, marked by the award of a cap.

Capped in a sentence

• The council capped the rent increase at three percent this year.

• Snow capped the distant peaks throughout the winter.

• He was first capped for the national side at the age of nineteen.

• The airline capped baggage fees so passengers would not be overcharged.

• The dentist capped the broken molar with a porcelain crown.

• She has been capped forty times for her country in rugby.

Where does capped come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense and past participle of 'cap', a word that travelled into Old English as 'cæppe' from the Late Latin 'cappa', which meant a hood or a hooded cloak. The same 'cappa' is the ancestor of a whole family of clothing words, including 'cape', 'chapel' (originally the shrine that held Saint Martin's sacred cloak) and 'chaperone'. Over the centuries the noun narrowed from a general head covering to the close-fitting hats we know today, and from there it grew figurative uses: to 'cap' something came to mean to cover or top it, and then to set an upper limit on it, as if placing a lid on a container. When the verb takes an ending the single final consonant doubles, giving 'capped', because the vowel before it is short and stressed; that doubling rule is the small spelling trap worth remembering. The financial and sporting senses are all modern offshoots of the same simple idea of putting something on top.

How the word is built

• cap (head covering; later 'upper limit')
• -ped (doubled consonant
• -ed past tense/participle)