There's also upper-case letters, the big letter at the head of a passage, and adjective forms: capital punishment, a capital idea (archaic). This article has a

There's also upper-case letters, the big letter at the head of a passage, and adjective forms: capital punishment, a capital idea (archaic). This article has a nice discussion of the etymology of capital: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/financial-word-origins https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/financial-word... Usages that started out as living metaphors become 'fossilized' over time as independent meanings. Don't languages in general have single words with multiple meanings? Is this a special feature of English?