capitalization.

1. The accounting treatment of recording an expenditure as an asset rather than immediately charging it as an expense.

2. The amount of capital attributed to a company, especially the market value of its outstanding shares.

3. The use of capital letters in writing according to a style or grammatical convention.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• capitalization of costs
• capitalization policy

On the page

The capitalization policy determined which development costs appeared as assets.

Capitalization changed the timing of reported expenses without removing the cash already spent.

Usage notes

Primary category: economics / business / social science. Forms: Usually uncountable. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings. Established modern English lexical item. No separate regional spelling or grammatical inflection entry. Writing functions: financial analysis, risk evaluation, comparison, explanation. Disciplines: economics, finance, business. Commonness: uncommon.