] I once heard a comment by a woman who grew up among the English upper class in the 1920s and '30s. She said her mother and aunts would talk about a relative who had been left with very little money after her husband died. What this woman remembered was the adults' hushed voices as they discussed the fact that their relative was "living off her *capital*". (gasp!)

The same is or was true among old money WASPs in the USA. If preserved, that capital sum protected you from ever having to work for a living if you didn't want to; once spent, it was gone for good. To say that a person had "dipped into capital" was a sign of either reckless improvidence or terrible misfortune.

There was a joke about one of the Vanderbilts during the Great Depression: "Harold had a bad year; he could still live off his income, but he couldn't live off the income from his income."