countercapital

C3O1U1N1T1E1R1C3A1P3I1T1A1L1

noun

A city other than the official capital that serves as a base of power and influence.

Scrabble 20

Meanings

nouncountercapital (plural countercapitals)

plural countercapitals

  1. A city other than the official capital that serves as a base of power and influence.

    From November 1920 on, Sun lived in Canton, which was becoming in the minds of many Chinese a countercapital to the republic's nominal capital at Peking.

    1994, Julie Wei, Prescriptions for Saving China, →ISBN, page xx
    2 more examples

    In the last third of the century Medelh'n in fact, as well as in the minds of the antioqueños, stood as an economically based countercapital in the west.

    1976, Frank Safford, The ideal of the practical, →ISBN, page 214

    Over the last fifty years of the century, however, the insurance industry, while remaining vibrant in London, also wandered upcoast to serve the needs of the Liverpool slavers who had begun to dominate the trade and whose city was rapidly becoming another countercapital of this cycle of accumulation.

    2005, Ian Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic, page 102
  2. Possessions, knowledge, and resources that support an alternative to the dominant culture

    Hacker spaces dot the unofficial landscapes of San Francisco and Oakland, nurturing support for WikiLeaks and other countercultural (and counter-capital) uses of high tech.

    2014, Jon Christensen, Boom Summer 2014: A Journal of California, →ISBN
    2 more examples

    Further, this imported 'counter-habitas' and 'cultural counter-capital' frictionally appreciates as pupils' experiences of schooling penetrate a system which depreciates their cultural currency.

    2002, Dr Stephen J Ball, Stephen Ball, Ivor F Goodson, Teachers' Lives And Careers, →ISBN

    How then is the collective capital of knowledge, practices and values distributed in medicine. Are there blatant inequalities in distribution and is 'countercapital' produced that is counter-productive to effective medical practice?

    2015, Alan Bleakley, Medical Humanities and Medical Education, →ISBN

Origin

Cite this entry
APA

countercapital. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/countercapital

MLA

“countercapital.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/countercapital. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “countercapital,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/countercapital.

Source: countercapital on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.