Word.ws English Dictionary

lowercase

/ˌləʊ.ə(ɹ)ˈkeɪs//ˈloʊ.ɚˌkeɪs/

lowercase is the alternative form of lower case.

Meaning of lower case

Noun

lower case (uncountable)

  1. The minuscule or small letters (a, b, c, as opposed to the uppercase or capital letters, A, B, C).
    • The strongest passwords are those which mix numbers and letters, upper case and lower case, and symbols.

Adjective

lowercase (not comparable)

  1. In lower case.
    • At a 1903 typography conference, attendees decided that they would use lowercase eszett and substitute “SZ” for uppercase instances of the letter, until they could figure out a proper design for it.2017 July 20, Thu-Huong Ha, “Germany has ended a century-long debate over a missing letter in its alphabet”, in Quartz, archived from the original on 04 Mar 2019

Verb

lowercase (third-person singular simple present lowercases, present participle lowercasing, simple past and past participle lowercased)

  1. (transitive) To convert (text) to lower case.
    • Sister Jadallah apologizes for being unable to bring her readers facts and figures on Palestinian Lesbianism (forgive my capital "L" in Lesbianism, but like my Black brothers I cannot bring myself to lower-casing our recently empowering accoutrements of our Gay identities)1990 April 28, Harry Hay, “Identifying As Gay ― Here's The Key”, in Gay Community News, page 5
    • I never asked Rob e. Hanson why he lowercased his middle initial; I suppose he figured a man just shouldn’t accumulate too much capital.2000, Tom Miller, Jack Ruby’s Kitchen Sink: Offbeat Travels Through America’s Southwest, Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, →ISBN, page 216

Synonyms of lowercase

Antonyms

Forms of lowercase

Noun
alternative formlower case
alternative formlower-case
Verb
third-person singular presentlowercases
present participlelowercasing
past participlelowercased
pastlowercased

Origin of lowercase

From the noun phrase lower case, which itself consists of an adjective modifying a noun; when used as a noun adjunct then, to render its syntactical function clearer and simpler, it is written as a single word or with a hyphen as a sort of chunking.

Questions about lowercase

What does lowercase mean?
Lowercase means in lower case.
What is lowercase the alternative form of?
Lowercase is the alternative form of lower case.
What part of speech is lowercase?
Lowercase can be an adjective or a verb.
How do you pronounce lowercase?
Lowercase is pronounced /ˈloʊ.ɚˌkeɪs/ (US).

Words near lowercase in the dictionary

  1. lowerarchies
  2. lowerarchy
  3. lowerator
  4. lowerators
  5. lowerCamelCase
  6. lowercase
  7. lowercased
  8. lowercases
  9. lowercasified
  10. lowercasifies
  11. lowercasify

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lowercase (page history and authors); lower case (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Ookap-lowercase.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-lowercase.wav.

Cite this entry: “lowercase.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lowercase. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.