caps

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of cap.

   She lined up the colorful caps along the windowsill.

   All the pens were missing their caps when the box arrived.

   Note

   A regular plural, made by adding -s, and it carries every sense of the noun with it: close-fitting hats, the caps that mark rank or occupation, academic mortarboards, protective covers and seals, crowns fitted over teeth, even the summits of mountains. The same spelling also serves as the verb's present-tense form, as in she caps the jar. A determiner in front (the caps, two caps) marks the noun.

2. 2
   nouncountableplural

   Capital letters: the large forms of letters such as A, B, and C, as opposed to their small lowercase versions.

   Like the tall letters on a billboard, built to grab attention from far away.

   The designer kept the brand name entirely in caps for emphasis.

   Typing a message in caps online often comes across as angry or aggressive.

   Similarcapitals, uppercase

   Oppositelowercase

   Note

   A noun that exists only in the plural: a single capital letter is not called a cap. It usually follows in, as in written in caps or kept in caps for emphasis. It describes a stretch of text set that way rather than counting letters, which is why typing in caps reads as a tone of voice rather than a choice of letters.

3. 3
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of cap.

   The agreement caps annual rent increases at three percent.

   She caps each jar tightly before storing it in the pantry.

   Note

   The -s form that goes with he, she, it or a singular noun, and it nearly always takes an object, since every sense of the verb is transitive: she caps the bottle, the rule caps spending, a final goal caps the night. That last, figurative use means rounding something off in style, ending on a high note rather than simply ending.

4. 4
   nounabbreviation

   Abbreviation of capabilities.

   The program queries the device caps at startup to decide which features to enable.

   Older graphics cards lacked the caps needed for the new shading effects.

   Note

   A programmer's clipping of capabilities, and like its source it is plural. It names the set of features a device or system supports, and it usually follows the thing it describes, as in device caps. Because cap can also mean setting an upper limit, a phrase like network caps may be misread as restrictions. In technical writing it means what the system can do, not where it stops.

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