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 Latin capāx, capāc-, from capere, to take; see kap- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin capāx ("capable").

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Examples

  • 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

  • a place was the Grotto, where Brissenden and he lounged in capacious leather chairs and drank Scotch and soda.

    Chapter 31 2010

  • a place was the Grotto, where Brissenden and he lounged in capacious leather chairs and drank Scotch and soda.

    Chapter 31 1908

  • 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.

    Peter Blauner: Where Have All The Middlebrows Gone? 2008

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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.

    Detecting a Wrongness 2010

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

Comments

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  • Citation on raree-show.

    September 12, 2008

  • "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