Word of the Day

: January 24, 2024

capitulate

verb kuh-PIH-chuh-layt

What It Means

To capitulate is to surrender to an enemy, often after negotiating terms, or to stop trying to fight or resist something.

// After months of organized boycotts, company officials finally capitulated to the protesters’ demands and announced significant changes to their practices.

// The teacher refused to capitulate: no calculators were to be used during the exam.

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capitulate in Context

“With [Horst] Hrubesch reluctant to add more attacking thrust to the team until it was too late, it was an odd game to end an odd year for Germany. But you have to give credit to Wales. It would have been easy to capitulate in the final game, given their results, but they continued to show some fighting spirit and finally got a reward for their determined play, pressing the visiting defence and working as a group to claim their first point of the campaign.” — Sophie Lawson, ESPN United Kingdom, 6 Dec. 2023

Did You Know?

We hope you’ll acquiesce to some history about capitulate because we can’t resist. When it first entered English in the 16th century, capitulate meant “to discuss terms with an enemy; to negotiate.” Its Latin source is more bookshelf than battlefield: the Medieval Latin word capitulare means “to distinguish [text] by chapters or headings,” as well as “to stipulate in an agreement.” The original “negotiate” sense of capitulate is now rarely heard, and today capitulate typically stresses surrender, whether to agreed-upon terms or in hopelessness before an irresistible opposing force (as in “team owners capitulated to the demands of the players’ union”).