Caption

How to spell caption

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce caption

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does caption mean?

1. nounA short piece of text printed beneath or beside a picture, or displayed on screen, that explains or labels it.
2. verbTo add a title or explanatory text to a picture, or to provide on-screen text for film or video.

Caption in a sentence

• noun

  The photograph ran without a caption, so nobody knew who was pictured.

• verb

  The broadcaster must caption every programme so deaf viewers can follow it.

• noun

  She switched on the caption feature so she could follow the film without the sound.

• verb

  Please caption each diagram clearly before the report goes to print.

Where does caption come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Caption comes from the Latin captio, meaning 'a taking' or 'a seizing', which was built on the verb capere, meaning 'to take' or 'to catch'. In its earliest English use during the 1300s and 1400s the word belonged to the world of law, where the caption was the formal heading on a legal document that recorded where and by what authority it had been 'taken' or certified. From that opening-heading sense it broadened to mean any title or heading placed at the top of a chapter or article. By the nineteenth century, with the rise of illustrated printing, it settled into its now-familiar meaning of the explanatory text printed beneath a picture, and later the on-screen subtitles for film and television. The same capere root that gives us 'take' here also lies behind everyday relatives such as 'capture', 'captive' and 'capable', which is a useful reminder that the spelling keeps the 'capt' stem rather than anything like 'capsh'.

How the word is built

• capt- (from Latin capere: to take, seize)
• -ion (noun suffix denoting an action or result)