Caponize

verb

verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To castrate (a cockerel) in order to fatten it for table use. transitive

    "To make Capons […] [S]ome for this Purpoſe make it their Buſineſs after Harveſt-time to go to Markets for buying up Chickens, and between Michaelmas and All-hollantide caponize the Cocks, when they have got large enough to have Stones [i.e., testes] of ſuch a Bigneſs that they may be pulled out; for if they are too little, it can't be done; […]"

  2. 2
    convert a cock into a capon wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
caponise

Example

More examples

"To make Capons […] [S]ome for this Purpoſe make it their Buſineſs after Harveſt-time to go to Markets for buying up Chickens, and between Michaelmas and All-hollantide caponize the Cocks, when they have got large enough to have Stones [i.e., testes] of ſuch a Bigneſs that they may be pulled out; for if they are too little, it can't be done; […]"

Etymology

From capon + -ize.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.