Meanings
alternative upper-case
- not comparableWritten in upper case; capital.
In German, the ß character is called eszett. It’s used in “Straße,” the word for street, and in the expletive “Scheiße.” It’s often transliterated as “ss,” and strangely enough, it’s never had an official uppercase counterpart.
2017 July 20, Thu-Huong Ha, “Germany has ended a century-long debate over a missing letter in its alphabet”, in Quartz, archived from the original on 04 Mar 2019
- alternativeAlternative form of upper case.
present singular third person uppercases · participle present uppercasing · participle past uppercased · past uppercased
- transitiveTo convert (text) to upper case.
Synonyms & antonyms
adjectiverelating to capital letters which were kept in the top half of a compositor's type case
nounone of the large alphabetic characters used as the first letter in writing or printing proper names and sometimes for emphasis
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
- Proto-Indo-European*upó
- Proto-Germanic*ub
- Proto-Germanic*upp
- Proto-West Germanic*upp
- Old Englishupp
- Middle Englishup
- Middle Englishupper
- Englishupper
- Proto-Indo-European*kap-
- Proto-Indo-European*kapyéti
- Proto-Italic*kapjō
- Proto-Italic*kapsos
- Latincapsa
- Old Northern Frenchcasse
- Middle Englishcase
- Englishcase
- Englishuppercase
Translations
Afrikaans hoofletters
- hoofletterswritten in upper case
Catalan majúscul
- majúsculwritten in upper case
Finnish versaali
- versaaliwritten in upper case
French majuscule
- majusculewritten in upper case
German großgeschrieben, groß
- großgeschriebenwritten in upper case
- großwritten in upper case
Hungarian nagybetűs, verzál
- nagybetűswritten in upper case
- verzálwritten in upper case
Indonesian kapital
- kapitalwritten in upper case
Russian загла́вный, прописно́й
- загла́вный (zaglávnyj)written in upper case
- прописно́й (propisnój)written in upper case
- большо́й (bolʹšój)written in upper case
Spanish versal, de caja alta
- versalwritten in upper case
- de caja altawritten in upper case
- titularwritten in upper case
Swedish versal
- versalwritten in upper case
Tagalog mayuskula, kaha-alta
- mayuskulawritten in upper case
- kaha-altawritten in upper case
Cite this entry
uppercase. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/uppercase
“uppercase.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/uppercase. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “uppercase,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/uppercase.
Source: uppercase on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.