Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To surrender under specified conditions.
- intransitive verb To give up all resistance; acquiesce: synonym: yield.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To draw up a writing in chapters, heads, or articles; hence, to draw up articles of agreement; arrange terms of agreement; treat; also, to enter into an agreement; confederate.
- To surrender to an enemy on stipulated conditions.
- Having a capitulum or knob. Specifically
- In botany, head-like: applied to the apothecium of a lichen when it is irregularly rounded or globular and seated on the apex of a stem-like portion of the thallus, as in
Cladonia .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- intransitive verb obsolete To settle or draw up the heads or terms of an agreement, as in chapters or articles; to agree.
- intransitive verb To surrender on terms agreed upon (usually, drawn up under several heads).
- transitive verb rare To surrender or transfer, as an army or a fortress, on certain conditions.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb obsolete To draw up in
chapters ; toenumerate . - verb obsolete To draw up the articles of
treaty with; totreat ,bargain ,parley . - verb To agree terms of surrender; to end all
resistance , togive up ; to go along with orcomply .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb surrender under agreed conditions
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Proponents think that if the alliance expands to include Georgia and Ukraine, the West will have "gotten the better of Russia," while to exclude those nations would be to "capitulate" to Moscow.
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We've all seen it, papers that could not have been written by an eighth grader, using words such as capitulate and manipulate, when the child cannot even spell cap and man correctly in person!
Archive 2006-05-01 2006
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We've all seen it, papers that could not have been written by an eighth grader, using words such as capitulate and manipulate, when the child cannot even spell cap and man correctly in person!
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Firstly it paints itself as the victim, having to "capitulate" to demands that it clearly wishes the public to think of as unreasonable.
Fast Company 2010
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Macmillan's CEO stood his ground, and explained his thinking in an open letter, and Amazon was forced to "capitulate" and return Macmillan books to the store.
Fast Company 2010
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So, this may be more about their inability to secure a locale than a desire to "capitulate" to the Cheney clan.
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However, the insurer's executives say Goldman refused to accept prices from other dealers and eventually AIG had to "capitulate".
CJR 2010
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Macmillan's CEO stood his ground, and explained his thinking in an open letter, and Amazon was forced to "capitulate" and return Macmillan books to the store.
Fast Company 2010
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In a statement on the Kindle Community website, Amazon says it must "capitulate" to Macmillan's demand to charge
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Amazon had posted a note on its site on Sunday saying that it would ultimately "capitulate" to Macmillan's demand for higher prices on e-books.
seanmeade commented on the word capitulate
I always assumed it meant something like 'to bow one's head' or 'to submit to someone else's head-ship', but it comes from 'to draw up terms or chapters' and 'chapters' comes from 'head' (like the heads of sections).
March 26, 2007
jwjarvis commented on the word capitulate
Blockbuster capitulated on that issue and ultimately abandoned the merger.
September 24, 2010