Sample Sentences for
capitalize
grouped by contextual meaning
(editor-reviewed)

capitalize as in:  capitalize the business

Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
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    Initially, we were capitalized with a loan of $500,000 from a single angel investor.
    capitalized = provided with investment funds
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    Cowan, Swain's high-tech clients frequently needed capitalization, and Gennaro helped them find the money.  (source)
    capitalization = provision of investment funds
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    It was fifteen thousand for a first-class ticket, but I'm sufficiently capitalized to indulge such whims.  (source)
    capitalized = provided with funds
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Show 10 more with 3 word variations
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    There were some old curmudgeons on the faculty—and some young fuddy-duddies, too—who objected to Owen's style; and I don't mean that they objected only to his outrageous capitalization.†  (source)
    standard suffix: The suffix "-tion", converts a verb into a noun that denotes the action or result of the verb. Typically, there is a slight change in the ending of the root verb, as in action, education, and observation.
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    When did you start wanting this so badly? he wondered, watching Claude walk alongside the stranger, explaining what they did as something to be replicated, capitalized, multiplied.  (source)
    capitalized = provided with investment funds
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    Across the way was the ladies' room, denoted by small, uncapitalized letters of gold that read FEMMES.†  (source)
    standard prefix: The prefix "un-" in uncapitalized means not and reverses the meaning of capitalized. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
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    As with wooden stakes, sunlight, and Italian food, vampires have a natural aversion to both punctuation and capitalization.†  (source)
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    He was sorry for Dick Turner, whom he knew to be unhappy; but even this tragedy seemed to him romantic; he saw it, impersonally, as a symptom of the growing capitalization of farming all over the world, of the way small farmers would inevitably be swallowed by the big ones.†  (source)
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    I'm a big believer in random capitalization.†  (source)
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    The rules of capitalization are so unfair to words in the middle.†  (source)
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    I recognized the capitalization immediately.†  (source)
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    The rules of capitalization are so unfair to words in the middle of a sentence.†  (source)
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    "Interesting capitalization," I said.†  (source)
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capitalize as in:  capitalize on our strength

•
How can we capitalize on being first with this idea?
capitalize on = gain advantage from
Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
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    The town wants to capitalize on the low-cost electricity provided by the dam.
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    Capitalizing on his sudden popularity, Louie ran for class president and won, borrowing the speech that Pete had used to win his class presidency at Compton.  (source)
    Capitalizing on = gaining advantage from
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    His was one of those well-groomed reputations that get the most out of everything; any unusual holiday acquires the character of an exploration, and though the explorer takes care to do nothing really original, the public does not know this, and he capitalizes the full value of a hasty impression.  (source)
    capitalizes = gains advantage from
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Show 10 more with 3 word variations
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    Gladstone explained to me how the Hegemony planned to capitalize on that obsession.†  (source)
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    Albus asked his parents immediately, capitalizing on the momentary absence of his brother.†  (source)
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    Then he capitalized on the midday sun to maximize recharging.†  (source)
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    Prison growth and the resulting "prison-industrial complex"—the business interests that capitalize on prison construction—made imprisonment so profitable that millions of dollars were spent lobbying state legislators to keep expanding the use of incarceration to respond to just about any problem.†  (source)
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    The wealthier shop owners took advantage of the long bleak months to disappear to holiday homes abroad, while the more determined hosted Christmas events, capitalizing on occasional carol concerts on the grounds, or festive craft fairs.†  (source)
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    She knew the cant of the Missionaria Protectiva, knew how to adapt the techniques of legend and fear and hope to her emergency needs, but she sensed wild changes here ....as though someone had been in among these Fremen and capitalized on the Missionaria Protectiva's imprint.†  (source)
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    That filmclip there—they call you 'Mahdi'—'Lisan al-Gaib'—as a last resort, you might capitalize on that.†  (source)
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    In fact, she handled most of the details very efficiently, capitalizing on the fact that most people were anxious to please her since she had lost her mamma only a few years back and they still remembered the agony in Hannah's face and the blood on Eva's.†  (source)
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    It would be a little premature, since there was nothing guaranteed for the girls, but he could capitalize on the general excitement of the day.†  (source)
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    I didn't feel sorry for her, even though I did feel sorry for the people who would be blamed for this nightmare: the Student Council for their dangerously unstable backdrop, Dickey Wix for capitalizing on the misfortune of a fat teenage cheerleader in her underwear, and Red Sweet for his unprofessional and potentially life-threatening wiring of the lighting in the Jackson High gym.†  (source)
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meaning too common or too rare to warrant focus

Show 3 with this contextual meaning
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    I suddenly wanted Davis badly enough that I no longer cared why I wanted him, whether what wanted him was capitalized or lowercase.  (source)
    capitalized = in uppercase letters
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    I have to restrain myself from capitalizing the last two words.  (source)
    capitalizing = changing the first letters from lower to upper case
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    The term comes from the word capitalize and is slang that means to get the better of another person.†  (source)
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Show 10 more with 2 word variations
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    First, "kinder" should have been capitalized.†  (source)
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    Okay, why does he capitalize LOSE and OVER?†  (source)
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    In Finch's text, "Private" is capitalized.†  (source)
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    If you haven't spent all your energy, you'll be able to capitalize when opportunities arise.†  (source)
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    For here was Mishka's project in a nutshell: a compendium of quotations from seminal texts arranged in chronological order, but in each of which the word bread had been capitalized and printed in bold.†  (source)
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    I learned that the bar had been built in 1933, to celebrate and capitalize upon the repeal of Prohibition, and its spacious, even somewhat cavernous dimensions were originally meant to encompass a dance floor.†  (source)
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    And the words the and order are capitalized.†  (source)
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    He was out of the house, wandering through the streets, blind, deaf, senseless, immersed in that boiling mass of latent energy...like a ship with sails caught in the nexus of a typhoon, fighting to convert a whirlpool of wind into the motive power that would lead to safety...S. Powell fought to absorb that fearful torrent, to Capitalize that latent energy, to Cathectize and direct it toward the Demolition of Reich before it was too late, too late, too late, too late, too late...—— 16 ABOLISH THE LABYRINTH.†  (source)
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    It was full of words ending in e's, s's that looked like f's, capitalized nouns, y's where i's should've been.†  (source)
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    Yet even here she had early realized that she could and should capitalize her looks and charm—and had.†  (source)
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