All 21 Uses of
capital
in
Middlemarch
Uses with a very common or rare meaning:
- Miserliness is a capital quality to run in families; it's the safe side for madness to dip on.†
Chpt 1
- A man who half starves himself, and goes the length in family prayers, and so on, that you do, believes in his religion whatever it may be: you could turn over your capital just as fast with cursing and swearing:—plenty of fellows do.†
Chpt 2
- And he was not going to have his vanities provoked by contact with the showy worldly successes of the capital, but to live among people who could hold no rivalry with that pursuit of a great idea which was to be a twin object with the assiduous practice of his profession.†
Chpt 2
- He gave himself up entirely to the many kinds of work which he could do without handling capital, and was one of those precious men within his own district whom everybody would choose to work for them, because he did his work well, charged very little, and often declined to charge at all.†
Chpt 3
- He had brought the last "Keepsake," the gorgeous watered-silk publication which marked modern progress at that time; and he considered himself very fortunate that he could be the first to look over it with her, dwelling on the ladies and gentlemen with shiny copper-plate cheeks and copper-plate smiles, and pointing to comic verses as capital and sentimental stories as interesting.†
Chpt 3
- He was coming to England, to try his fortune, as many other young men were obliged to do whose only capital was in their brains.†
Chpt 3
- I think of getting Garth to manage for me—he has made such a capital plan for my buildings; and Lovegood is hardly up to the mark.†
Chpt 4
- Come, that's capital.†
Chpt 4 *
- We are working at capital punishment.†
Chpt 4
- …and white ducks seeming to wander about the uneven neglected yard as if in low spirits from feeding on a too meagre quality of rinsings,—all these objects under the quiet light of a sky marbled with high clouds would have made a sort of picture which we have all paused over as a "charming bit," touching other sensibilities than those which are stirred by the depression of the agricultural interest, with the sad lack of farming capital, as seen constantly in the newspapers of that time.†
Chpt 4
- But come, now—as between man and man—without humbug—a little capital might enable me to make a first-rate thing of the shop.†
Chpt 4
- "And this Hospital is a capital piece of work, due entirely to Mr. Bulstrode's exertions, and in a great degree to his money.†
Chpt 5
- "Very well," said Lydgate to Mr. Bulstrode, "we have a capital house-surgeon and dispenser, a clear-headed, neat-handed fellow; we'll get Webbe from Crabsley, as good a country practitioner as any of them, to come over twice a-week, and in case of any exceptional operation, Protheroe will come from Brassing.†
Chpt 5
- My father can't spare me any capital, else I might go into farming.†
Chpt 5
- The scent would have been sweeter to Fred Vincy, who was coming along the lanes on horseback, if his mind had not been worried by unsuccessful efforts to imagine what he was to do, with his father on one side expecting him straightway to enter the Church, with Mary on the other threatening to forsake him if he did enter it, and with the working-day world showing no eager need whatever of a young gentleman without capital and generally unskilled.†
Chpt 6
- When a man in setting up a house and preparing for marriage finds that his furniture and other initial expenses come to between four and five hundred pounds more than he has capital to pay for; when at the end of a year it appears that his household expenses, horses and et caeteras, amount to nearly a thousand, while the proceeds of the practice reckoned from the old books to be worth eight hundred per annum have sunk like a summer pond and make hardly five hundred, chiefly in unpaid…†
Chpt 6
- He did gradually withdraw his capital, but he did not make the sacrifices requisite to put an end to the business, which was carried on for thirteen years afterwards before it finally collapsed.†
Chpt 6
- I am ready to narrow my own resources and the prospects of my family by binding myself to allow you five hundred pounds yearly during my life, and to leave you a proportional capital at my death—nay, to do still more, if more should be definitely necessary to any laudable project on your part.†
Chpt 6
- I only meant that they avoid expenses, although Wrench has a capital practice.†
Chpt 7
- Papa said he had come, with one bad year after another, to trade more and more on borrowed capital, and had had to give up many indulgences; he could not spare a single hundred from the charges of his family.†
Chpt 7
- "My dear Harriet," said Mr. Bulstrode, wincing under his wife's eyes, which were filling with tears, "I have supplied your brother with a great deal of capital.†
Chpt 7
Definition:
-
(meaning too common or rare to warrant focus) Capital has many other senses including an uppercase letter (such as B in contrast to b); and anything that is more important than other similar things -- especially a city from which a nation is governed. Capital is often confused with capitol which is the building (or buildings) from which a nation is governed. See a comprehensive dictionary for other senses of capital.