2 July 2020
The words capital and Capitol are often confused. That’s understandable; the U.S. Capitol is located in the capital city of Washington, DC. But despite their superficial similarities, the two words have very different etymologies.
Capital enters English in the twelfth century from the Anglo-Norman French capitall, an adjective relating to the head. The Anglo-Norman word comes from the Latin adjective capitalis, which is based on the noun caput, head. There is this from the Ancrene Riwle, a monastic manual for anchoresses written sometime in the twelfth century, with extant manuscripts from the early thirteenth:
And he oðe munt of Caluerie, steih ȝet hcrre on rode; ne ne swonc neuer mon so swuðe, ne so sore ase he dude þet ilke dei þet he bledde, o uif halue, brokes of ful brode & deope wunden, al wiðuten eddren capitalen þet bledden on his hefde under þe þornene krune,
(And he upon the mount of Calvary, climbed yet higher on the cross; no one ever underwent such severe and painful hardship as he did that very day when he bled, from five places, in very broad streams and deep wounds, notwithstanding the capital veins on his head that bled under the thorny crown.)
It’s easy to see how a word relating to the head might eventually take on a meaning of principal or main, and that was in place by the early fifteenth century, as can be seen in this translation of Guy de Chauliac's Grande Chirurgie:
Obtalmie capitale is declared bi heuynez & akyng of the heued.
(The capital form of ophthalmia [i.e., conjunctivitis] is presented by heaviness and aching of the head.)
Although the sense of capital letters is attested to earlier. From John Trevisa’s translation of Higden’s Polychronicon, written sometime before 1387:
For Pheniciens were þe firste fynderes of lettres, ȝit we writeþ capital lettres wiþ reed colour, in token and mynde þat Phenices were þe firste fynders of lettres.
Use of the word to mean deadly or mortal dates to at least 1395 when it is used in a Wycliffite tract, Thirty-Seven Conclusions of the Lollards:
Whanne he pretendith him to make sacramentis, yea, in forme of the chirche, is to take awei fredom fro God, and to constreine him to worche with his capital enemy at the will of his capital enemy, and this is for to blasfeme the Lord almyghti.
This sense would go on to be the capital in capital punishment.
Capital used in reference to the principal city in a country or region appears by 1439. From the Proceedings of the Privy Council for that year:
It shal now be said this were a strange a thing to the Kyng to doo and shold to gretly touche and hurte his worshipp considering that he hat so solemply received his unction and coronne thereinne and inne the capital cite thereof.
Finally, the use of capital to refer to an investment, or the principal value or source of funds for a company, appears in the mid sixteenth century. From an accounting textbook written by James Peele in 1569:
The last thinge thereof, was the subtractinge or takinge out of the somme totall of the creditours, from the totall somme of the money, debtes and goodes, and the reste which proceaded thereof made playne and manifest the stocke, or capitall, which (as before) the owner of thaccompte hathe in trafique of merchaundise committed to thorder of his servaunt.
US Capitol building, 2007
Capitol, on the other hand, has an entirely different origin and trajectory. It too is from Latin, but from Capitolium, or the Capitoline Hill in Rome, on which stood the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Chaucer makes use of the word in the “Monk’s Tale,” c. 1375, lines 2703–10:
This Julius to the Capitolie wente
Upon a day, as he was wont to goon,
And in the Capitolie anon hym hente
This false Brutus and his othere foon,
And stiked hym with boydekyns anoon
With many a wounde, and thus they lete hym lye;
But nevere gronte he at no strook but oon,
Or elles at two, but if his storie lye.
Use to refer to a building that houses a legislative chamber would have to wait until the British colonies in North America. In 1699, the Virginia General Assembly passed:
An Act directing the Building the Capitol and the City of Williamsburgh.
Other legislative buildings, including the U.S. Capitol, whose cornerstone was laid in 1793, take their name from the original in Williamsburg.
Sources:
Ancren Riwle. James Morton, ed. London: Camden Society, 1853, 258. Google Books.
Anglo-Norman Dictionary, second edition, 2017, s.v. capital2. http://www.anglo-norman.net/gate/
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Monk’s Prologue and Tale.” Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website. 2020. https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/monks-prologue-and-tale
Lewis, Charlton T. and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879. s.v. capitalis.
Middle English Dictionary, 2018, s.v. capital adj. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2012, s.v. capital, adj. and n.2; Capitol, n.
Nicolas, Harris, ed. Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council of England, vol. 5, 1835, 360–61.
Peele, James. The Pathe Waye to Perfectnes, in th’Accomptes of Debitour, and Creditour. London: Thomas Purfoote, 1569, fol. 13r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden, Monachi Cestrensis; Together with the English Translations of John Trevisa and of an Unknown Writer of the Fifteenth Century. Churchill Babington, ed. vol.1. London: Longman, Greeen, Longmans, Roberts, and Green, 1865, 129. HathiTrust Digital Library.
Remonstrance Against Romish Corruptions in the Church. J. Forshall, ed. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1851, 123. HathiTrust Digital Library.
Photo credit: Scrumshus, 2007, Wikimedia Commons.