Other forms: capitalists
A capitalist is somebody who owns capital, or who supports that system. A venture capitalist, capitalist economies, capitalist and socialist.
The strict sense is the first: a capitalist is an owner of productive assets rather than a person who works for wages, which is the distinction the word was coined to make. In everyday use it simply means pro-market. Note capitalism; and that a venture capitalist invests other people's money in young companies.
1nouncapitalistSomebody who owns capital.
“The factory was owned by a wealthy capitalist who lived far away in the city.”
2adjectivesystemOf the system based on private ownership.
“The country moved from a planned economy to a capitalist one in the 1990s.”
capitalist is an owner or a supporter of a system.
Latin
capitālis
Old French
capital
Middle English
capital
English
capital
English, today
capitalist
Built from
From capital + -ist. capital comes from Middle English capital, from Old French capital, from Latin capitālis. From Middle English capital, borrowed partly from Old French capital and partly from Latin capitālis (“of the head”) (in sense “head of cattle”), from caput (“head”) (English cap) + -ālis. Use in trade and finance originated in Medieval economies when a common but expensive transaction involved trading heads of cattle. The noun is from the adjective. In the fourth sense, displaced native Old English hēafodburg, equivalent to head + borough (“city”). Compare chattel and kith and kine (“all one’s possessions”), which also use “cow” to mean “property”.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA