MEANING
1. A person who invests substantial wealth in business or owns significant productive assets.
2. A person who supports an economic system based on private ownership and business profit.
3. Based on an economic system where private owners control businesses and invest for profit.
Use it for
identifying ownership of invested business wealth; distinguishing investors from wage earners in a model; separating economic position from political beliefSeparates ownership of invested wealth, support for an economic system, and description of that system. Academic functions: Theory / Conceptual Language.
Words that belong together
- an industrial capitalist
- a financial capitalist
- wealthy capitalists
On the page
The account distinguishes the capitalist who supplies investment from the managers who run the firm.
Ownership of productive assets does not reveal every aspect of a capitalist’s political beliefs.
A wage earner can be a capitalist in the ideological sense without owning a business.
The debate concerns the capitalist’s defense of private ownership rather than the amount of wealth that person holds.
The analysis compares capitalist institutions without assuming that every country organizes them identically.
Nearby words
Word forms
- Base
- capitalist
Usage notes
Countable noun: capitalist, capitalists. Also an adjective. More/most capitalist can compare the degree of capitalist features; no usual -er/-est forms. Register: neutral. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
Keep a thought for later. Sign in to save privately.