Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A male chicken castrated when young to improve the quality of its flesh for food.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A castrated cock; a cock-chicken castrated for the purpose of improving the flesh for table.
  • noun [So called, it is said, because letters were often conveyed inside of fowls. Cf. F. poulet, a fowl, also a love-letter, a billet-doux.] A letter.
  • To make a capon of; caponize.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A castrated cock, esp. when fattened; a male chicken gelded to improve his flesh for the table.
  • transitive verb To castrate; to make a capon of.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A cockerel which has been gelded and fattened for the table.
  • verb transitive To castrate; to make a capon of.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun flesh of a castrated male chicken
  • noun castrated male chicken

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English capoun, from Old English capūn and from Old French capon, both from Latin cāpō, cāpōn-.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old English capūn, from from Latin capo, caponem.

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Examples

  • The precipitous banks of red sandstone are richly clothed with vegetation, some of the trees ancient and very fine, especially the magnificent one called the capon tree, and the lofty king of the wood, remnants of the fine forests which at one time had covered the country.

    Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville Mary Somerville 1826

  • The neutered rooster, called a capon, was also prized for its fat.

    Planet Malaysia 2009

  • The neutered rooster, called a capon, was also prized for its fat.

    The Digital Awakening 2009

  • _ “Gallinacius/the capon is a gelded cocke/& because

    Early English Meals and Manners Frederick James Furnivall 1867

  • They also house their extra females at these capon ranches.

    Messages to Mars Hugh Barlow 2011

  • I rose to follow him, quickly running my tongue over my teeth to check for any bits of food—I was regretting the peppered capon from this morning.

    Exit the Actress Priya Parmar 2011

  • I rose to follow him, quickly running my tongue over my teeth to check for any bits of food—I was regretting the peppered capon from this morning.

    Exit the Actress Priya Parmar 2011

  • But the four paragraphs after that, where I went off like a capon, were taken word-for-word from Glenn Beck.

    Chris Kelly: Tea Party Leader: We Plan to Kill Millions Like Mao 2010

  • The "guests", FBC, DIRTY STRAGGLER and whomsoever is available are doing whatever the late capon bourgeoisie do at a gathering for a holidaymaker mealtime: Greeting those they haversack't met in a few monthlies, looking at or taking photographers and unconsciously "consenting to exist" as a Romanian would say.

    Life is Life (or Ode to a great big idiot like Zizek) 2010

  • I go to Tuscany, and cappelletti – pasta knots stuffed with cheese, capon and pork, served in a clear capon broth – come from Emilia-Romagna, where they're a Christmas treat.

    Spaghetti malfunction 2010

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