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Monday October 26, 2009

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capitulate [kuh-PICH-uh-layt]

intransitive verb

1. To surrender under agreed upon conditions.

• Also, GM was forced to capitulate to escalating union demands for years that not only drove up wages, making GM less competitive with foreign automakers who paid their workers less, but also burdened GM with billions of dollars in health and retiree costs.
  Frank Ahrens, "GM car owners still covered", Virginian – Pilot, Jun 2, 2009
• Tall, thin, draped in Afrocentric garb and crowned by a head full of dreadlocks that are always in motion, Ms. Jones is a recognizable community fixture. She left her hometown neighborhood when others fled the drug-related violence but later returned, refusing to capitulate to dealers.
  Adrienne T. Washington, "D.C. mentor honors mothers", McClatchy - Tribune Business News, May 10, 2009
• "Oh, for you," said De Marsay to himself, casting a glance of disdain upon the duenna, "if one cannot make you capitulate, with a little opium one can make you sleep. We know mythology and the fable of Argus."
  Honore de Balzac, (1799 - 1850) A French novelist and playwright. The Girl with the Golden Eyes (1815)

Origin of the Word

Capitulate, approximately 1580, derives from Medieval Latin 'capitulatus,' past participle of 'capitulare', "to arrange in chapters, hence to arrange conditions," from Latin capitula, "chapters."