u/Impressive-Spend-884

My friend and I were having a conversation and she referred to it as the capital punishment and I realised I had never heard that before. She mentioned that she felt it sounded right since we also say the death penalty. The conclusion I came to is that it's not necessarily a grammar rule but about the specificity of the terms, but she reckons there's an underlying grammatical argument to it... so uh... does anyone know?

My friend and I were having a conversation and she referred to it as the capital punishment and I realised I had never heard that before. She mentioned that she felt it sounded right since we also say the death penalty. The conclusion I came to is that it’s not necessarily a grammar rule but about the specificity of the terms, but she reckons there’s an underlying grammatical argument to it… so uh… does anyone know?