Decap

//diːˈkæp// verb

verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To remove a cap.

    "Late one night in 1992, in Sudan's desiccated capital of Khartoum—the famous confluence of the Blue and White Nile Rivers, from where they blend together and flow deeply north, toward Egypt—an old Englishman broke Islamic law and decapped a bottle of Johnny Walker Red."

  2. 2
    To remove a cap.; To enzymatically remove a cap from mRNA.
  3. 3
    To remove a cap.; To remove the epoxy from an integrated circuit.
  4. 4
    To remove a cap.; To cause an armor-piercing shell to lose its hardened cap, degrading its ability to penetrate armor.
  5. 5
    To remove a cap.; To remove an upper limit.

    "In October 1985 ARDC successfully decapped the AIF and was operating under the RDTE appropriation ."

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  1. 6
    To change an uppercase letter to lowercase; to decapitalize.

    "In English this pronoun is always written with a capital letter, while "you", the second person singular, which in Russian out of courtesy we spell with a capital, is decapped in English."

Example

More examples

"Late one night in 1992, in Sudan's desiccated capital of Khartoum—the famous confluence of the Blue and White Nile Rivers, from where they blend together and flow deeply north, toward Egypt—an old Englishman broke Islamic law and decapped a bottle of Johnny Walker Red."

Etymology

From de- + cap.

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