Charging a battery or a capacitor, what does it mean? What do you mean when you say to charge a battery or a capacitor or whatever it is that people charge?
What are you doing?  I was taught by some experts what charges are.  There seem to be two types, negative and positive.  But charging something/whatever device seem to be a verb or so it is to me.  Charging, will charge, charged, has been charged.  It seems like a verb to me.
So what kind of verb is it?  Is it like you are adding or subtracting charges to or from the device or none of the two?  Then again which one, positive or negative or some other kind?
And where do you get them charges from?  Are you depleting some other poor device from its charge just to transfer it, pump it, shove it, send it or whatever it is to the device that you are charging?
 A: Charge as a noun,
the property of matter that is responsible for electrical phenomena, existing in a positive or negative form.

*

*the quantity of matter responsible for electrical phenomena carried
by a body.

*energy stored chemically in a battery for conversion into electricity.

*an act or period of storing electrical energy in a battery.

Charge as a verb,
store electrical energy in (a battery, battery-operated device or capacitor).
"the shaver can be charged up and used while travelling"

*

*(of a battery or battery-operated device) receive and store
electrical energy.

*load or fill (a container, gun, battery, etc.) to the full or proper extent.

What do you mean when you say to charge a battery or a capacitor . . . . . ?
This is charge being used as a verb with energy being added to the devices.
In the case of the battery the stored energy is chemical potential energy.
In the case of a capacitor the stored energy is electric potential energy produced by the process of separating negative and positive charges (noun).
A: In fact, you can charge electrons into a device, but that is not what people call a battery. Instead, you would be constructing an electrostatic capacitance in this way. These can produce high voltages, but have very limited energy density.
In the popular battery no charges are added during the charging process. Rather, you pump potential energy into the chemical storage material, which undergoes a phase transformation to accommodate the added energy. - This process usually involves two compartments with mutually reactive material, separated by a semi-permeable membrane. The membrane is selectively allowing ion transport from one compartment into the other. For the phase transformation and the associated energy transfer, there also needs to be a balance of electrons transferred between the compartments. This is where the electrical contacts of the battery come into play. By connecting them the electrons can circumvent the membrane (electrolyte) and the discharge reaction is allowed to happen... If you apply a strong enough electric potential in place of the short circuit, you can force the charging reaction... In both processes, the balance of electrons leaving the anode and entering the cathode at any moment should be =0. (or very close to zero... imbalances effectively degrade your battery, and can lead to catastrophic failure. Say, when you combine two batteries with different capacities). - The stream of electrons is the vessel for pumping or drawing energy in and out of the battery.
... Like water in two ponds with an altitude difference. You don't use up the water when you pass it through a turbine from the higher into the lower pond. But, you extract the potential energy that is initially in the system (when the water is in the higher pond)...
Does that help?
A: My lame uneducated answer. I flunked school long ago so I am used to being outright wrong.
I stand opposed to the whole lingo, the very language used, the term, the word "charging". It is false.
Bottom line: There is no such thing as charging a battery or a capacitor.  We don't charge them, if anything we energize them.
How come the knowledge authorities don't say such thing as charging an atom.   Maybe some big shot does when no one is listening.
When you hit the atom with say a photon, the electron get  excited and then what happens... anyway you can finish my statement.
You give that electron even more energy.... then you give it even more and really go to town so to speak.... you get the idea.... ( eventually the bugger will take off) but then that becomes another story.
I consider a battery just a giant atom.  By energizing it I stretch the electron away from the nucleas, from the proton.   In fact incidently in a car battery, it is literally protons but we don't call it that.  When a hydrogen loses and electron we loudly don't call it a proton.  Anyway there is no need to beat that to death.
By energizing a battery you sort of stretch out a rubber band. The stretched space has been given different names.... it is the place that the payload is stored.  What payload?
Photons are the deliverymen, they carry a payload.  I believe ( all I have is belief since I am not an expert), the payload is energy.   What is energy?  The experts claim they know. I don't.  I say I don't know what energy is, all I  know is the value I assign to it.  I don't know where it comes from and where it eventually goes but only it's path I seem to witness.
Energy is the state of stretched rubber band.  Energy is the shape of the photon.  Energy is sight, sound, taste, experience, information, data, memory.  Everything we do and not do, it is all about this ellusive stuff.  We know what it is... and we don't know what it is.
Charges are not data, information, memory or whatever you want to call it.
If someone ever to ask me what is information. Since I am not an educated man I don't have all those fancy lingoes to offer.  I simply tell them that information, memory etc, (as different words are used depending on the setting) is charges held separate, it is a state of tension.  And when that state of tension being released, it is what we call experience.  what we call experience is the closest thing to us.  Closer than information. Once you label the experience it becomes stored.  But the state of experience can not be labeled, if anything at best we point at it and call it experience since we use word to communicate.
Once that has been made clear, that foundation, then education can start.  Because the real world has rules and keeps its rules hidden.  And you have to work at it, for it to reveal itself.  Why?  Why you have to work at it, you have to earn it otherwise it has no value at all. It will be like you didn't do anything at all.  It will be as if you didn't even get up in the morning.  If will be as if you weren't even born.
This is the uneducated version of answering my question in plain simple readers digest manner that is both clear and yet ends at the obvious door, a door one can live with, the door of the mysterious... not some hocus pocus, spooky mystery.
Now some fingers will decide, enough is enough and annouce:  " This question closed. This post is closed" or some such thing.
In conclusion:  You energize the battery.  This is done by photons, the type which is termed as near-field radiation.  It follows the wires, it moves in empty space and electrons being in the outer shell abosorbs the photons.  Impregnated by the photons, it is full of vitality and force to stretch out, going to higher orbits away from the gripping force the keeps it bound to the protons at the center if you will.  Now there is much more space, stretched out like a rubber band away from the other.  Why does not move away in the what we call electrolyte but then prefer to use the conductor outside to move back and join where it was move away from to begin with....  I have no desire to wear myself out.  You can do a better job with that.  You know electro-negativity... you know the play....
