Philosophical, religious, and political terms A particular example of where capitonyms are prominent is in terminology relating to philosophy, religion, and politics. Capitalized words are often used to differentiate a philosophical concept from how the concept is referred to in everyday life, or to demonstrate respect for an entity or institution. Words for
transcendent ideas in the Platonic sense are often capitalized, especially when used in a religious context. Examples include "Good", "Beauty", "Truth" or "the One". The word "god" is capitalized to "God" when referring to the single deity of
monotheistic religions such as Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, and common to capitalize pronouns related to God (He, Him, His, etc.) as well; this practice is followed by many versions of the
Bible, such as the
NKJV. In this tradition, possessive pronouns are also capitalized if one is quoting God; "My" and "Mine" are capitalized, which should not be done when a human speaks. The pronouns "You", "Your", and "Yours" are also sometimes capitalized in reference to God. Other distinctions sometimes made include
church (meaning a building) and
Church (meaning an organization or group of people), and the liturgical
Mass, versus the physical
mass. As political parties are often named after philosophies or ideologies, a capital letter is used to differentiate between a supporter of the philosophy, and a supporter of the party, for instance
Liberal, a supporter of any
Liberal Party, and
liberal, a supporter of the philosophy of
liberalism. Terms such as "small-l liberal" may be used to indicate the concept that an individual supports. Similar examples are
conservative/
Conservative,
democrat/
Democrat,
libertarian/
Libertarian,
republican/
Republican,
socialist/
Socialist,
communist/
Communist, and a supporter of
labour/
Labour.
List of capitonyms in English The following list includes only "dictionary words" or lemma. Personal names (
Mark/
mark,
Will/
will), place-names (
China/
china,
Turkey/
turkey), company names (
Fiat/
fiat), names of publications (
Time/
time) etc. are all excluded as too numerous to list. Adjectives distinct from placenames (e.g.
Polish/
polish) are allowed. Pairs in which one word is simply a secondary meaning of the other – e.g.
Masonry (secret society), which is in essence a peculiar use of the word
masonry (wall building) – are omitted.
Example in poetry The poem "Job's Job" from Richard Lederer's
The Word Circus is an example of the use of capitonyms: ==Other languages==