What does capitalized mean?
Capitalized is the past tense and past participle of the verb capitalize, and it carries two distinct but related meanings. In writing and typography, something is capitalized when it is rendered with an uppercase (capital) letter — as with the first word of a sentence, proper nouns such as names of people and places, and titles. In finance and business, a company is said to be capitalized when it has been supplied with money to operate and grow, while an expenditure is capitalized when it is recorded on the balance sheet as an asset rather than deducted immediately as an expense. The word derives ultimately from the Latin caput, meaning head, via capitalis, which also gave English words like captain, chapter, and cattle. Its dual life in grammar and accounting makes it a useful term across editorial style guides and corporate reports alike.
verb (past tense and past participle of capitalize)The past tense and past participle of capitalize: to have written a letter or word in uppercase, or to have provided business with capital or turned an asset into capital.
- (of letters or words) written in uppercase; having had an initial capital letter applied
- (of a company or asset) supplied with capital, or recorded as an asset on a balance sheet rather than as an expense
"All proper nouns are capitalized in formal English prose."
"The editor noticed that the first letter of every sentence was properly capitalized."
"The startup was capitalized with over ten million dollars from venture investors."
Every headline you've ever read that Starts Like This was capitalized — a typographic convention so old it traces back to Roman stone inscriptions.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of capitalized
Capitalized comes from capitalize, formed in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century from the adjective capital, itself borrowed from Latin capitalis, meaning 'of the head', from caput ('head'). The Latin root spread widely: capitulate and recapitulate share it, as does the phrase per capita. The financial sense of capitalize developed alongside the older sense of providing capital, and the typographic sense followed naturally from the use of 'capital letters'.
Related word forms
How capitalized is actually used
Neutral register, common in both everyday writing advice and financial reporting. In finance, 'capitalized' often carries a technical meaning: costs treated as long-term assets rather than immediate expenses.
Easily confused with capitalized
Capitalize is the base verb form, while capitalized is its past tense and past participle describing an action already completed.
Capitulate means to surrender or give in, whereas capitalized relates to writing in uppercase or supplying financial capital.