Capulet

Surname of the heroine Juliet's family in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, from the Italian Capuleti.

Capulet (plural Capulets)

1. (figuratively) A member or citizen of the family, party, or country of the wife in a Romeo and Juliet couple and/or one of a pair of feuding groups, the other identified as Montague.
   • 1913, Annabella Bruce Marchand, Dirk, a South African, page 198:

     It goes without saying that she knew nothing whatever of the bad relations subsisting between her father and her sweetheart. She did not know her Romeo was a Montague still less that to him she was a Capulet.

   • 1963, Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Education of a general, 1880-1939, page 8:

     Still, despite Marshall's impression of a kind of Montague-Capulet feud, George Catlett did succeed in marrying Laura Emily, the daughter of Dr. Jonathan Bradford, and his sister, Margaret, married Laura's brother, Thomas.

   • 2004, Scott Casper, Cardinal Sin: Tales of Alaska, War, and More, page 161:

     She playfully called herself a tragedienne, much like Juliet Capulet, and she thought of Timmy as her Romeo Montague.

   • 2020, Michael Strevens, The Knowledge Machine:

     That said, Capulet's skepticism has a sound rationale. She needs only one kind of thing, caloric fluid, to explain the movement and behavior of heat. Montague has posited two kinds of things, heat itself and heat radiation, each popping up to do the job it is good for and then conveniently metamorphosing into the other when that's what's needed instead.

• Montague

• Moore, Olin H. (July 1930). "The Origins of the Legend of Romeo and Juliet in Italy". Speculum. Medieval Academy of America.