Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Capable of containing a large quantity; spacious or roomy: synonym: spacious.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Capable of receiving or holding: as, a jar capacious of 20 gallons.
- Capable of holding much; roomy; spacious: as, a capacious vessel; a capacious bay or harbor; a capacious mind or memory.
- Disposed to receive or take comprehensive views (of).
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Having capacity; able to contain much; large; roomy; spacious; extended; broad.
- adjective Able or qualified to make large views of things, as in obtaining knowledge or forming designs; comprehensive; liberal.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Having a lot of space inside;
roomy .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective large in capacity
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Bellow's letters take the reader through a long and replete – "capacious" is his wife's word for it – life.
Saul Bellow's widow on his life and letters: 'His gift was to love and be loved' Rachel Cooke 2010
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a place was the Grotto, where Brissenden and he lounged in capacious leather chairs and drank Scotch and soda.
Chapter 31 2010
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a place was the Grotto, where Brissenden and he lounged in capacious leather chairs and drank Scotch and soda.
Chapter 31 1908
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While I wouldn't necessarily argue that Uris or Wouk have the same richness of language or psychological depth as, say, John Updike or Ian McEwan, they do offer a kind of capacious private world for the reader to move around in, a lush mental landscape that can only be found in books.
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Calling it "capacious" and "quite spectacular," she praised the club's managers for their enforcement of drinking laws.
NYT > Home Page By LISA W. FODERARO 2010
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Ark "-- by which complimentary title the capacious boat devoted to the use of the juniors of the house was known -- lazily up on the tide towards
The Willoughby Captains Talbot Baines Reed 1872
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The narrator is himself an unengaging figure whose status as a blank slate on which his friend Perkus inscribes a more capacious understanding does not make him a character with whom one wants to spend over 450 pages.
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The narrator is himself an unengaging figure whose status as a blank slate on which his friend Perkus inscribes a more capacious understanding does not make him a character with whom one wants to spend over 450 pages.
April 2010 2010
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Carrying lip gloss, keys, sunglasses, shopping lists and candy bars, all the trivia of the handbag, in its capacious elegance.
Evolution - Dedicated to the Honorable Cynthia McKinney Alice Walker Blog Administrator 2009
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The narrator is himself an unengaging figure whose status as a blank slate on which his friend Perkus inscribes a more capacious understanding does not make him a character with whom one wants to spend over 450 pages.
Postmodernism 2010
yarb commented on the word capacious
Citation on raree-show.
September 12, 2008
bilby commented on the word capacious
"A flight of smooth double chins led down to the dizzy depths of a still-snowy bosom veiled in snowy muslins that were held in place by a miniature portrait of the late Mr. Mingott; and around and below, wave after wave of black silk surged away over the edges of a capacious armchair, with two tiny white hands poised like gulls on the surface of the billows."
- Edith Wharton, 'The Age of Innocence'.
September 19, 2009