Capital or capitol: which is correct?
Correct
capital (a city; money; an upper-case letter) / capitol (a legislative building)
Avoid
capitol (for a capital city)
Avoid
capital (for the building where a legislature meets)
Summary
Correct: capital (a city; money; an upper-case letter) / capitol (a legislative building) — Avoid: capitol (for a capital city) / capital (for the building where a legislature meets). Capital = the seat of government, wealth used for investment, or an upper-case letter; capitol = the building in which a legislature meets.
- Part of speech
- noun
- Source
- Merriam-Webster
Why
Merriam-Webster: capitol (with an o) names the building where a legislature meets — the Capitol in Washington and the state capitols; every other sense, including the capital city, is capital.
Examples
- Jakarta is the capital of Indonesia.
- The protest ended on the steps of the state capitol.
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- Checked against
- Merriam-Webster / Oxford
- Spelling authority
- Merriam-Webster · Oxford English Dictionary / Oxford spelling · SCOWL
- Commonly confused and non-standard forms
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- Dictionary
- Hunspell en_US / en_GB / en_AU / en_CA · Dictionary license: MIT AND BSD (SCOWL combined licence)