Learn English – Correct capitalisation of “Machiavellian”

adjectivescapitalization

Does the adjective Machiavellian always have a capital letter?
For example:

The Machiavellian Iago manipulates
Othello into believing his wife,
Desdemona, had an affair.

Not sure if this is anything to go by but, Microsoft Word corrects the word to have a capital. I am not sure if this is also the case when it is an adjective.

Best Answer

First, apart from very rare exceptions, you should capitalize all words derived from a person’s name (see here and there, on this very site). It doesn't matter whether it's a noun, an adjective, a verb, anything. Just put a damn capital!

Now, for your specific case, two additional points in support of capitalization:

  1. the New Oxford American Dictionary lists all derivatives with a capital: Machiavel, Machiavellian, Machiavellianism.

  2. of the Corpus of Contemporary American English’s most recent 100 recorded uses of Machiavellian, only 3 use the lowercase.

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