In a Word: Getting Latin’s ‘Head’ Examined

Explore the wide variety of English vocabulary that stemmed from the Latin word for “head.”

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Senior managing editor and logophile Andy Hollandbeck reveals the sometimes surprising roots of common English words and phrases. Remember: Etymology tells us where a word comes from, but not what it means today.

In my previous In a Word column, “Giving Shape to Cape,” I explained how the Latin word for “head” — caput — evolved to give us two versions of the word cape, a clothing item and a geological feature. But caput took many other routes through Latin and the Romance languages. A veritable hydra, caput has spawned dozens of English words, some more obvious than others.

Cap

Today we might think of a cap — at least of the head-topping sort — as a close-fitting hat. A millennium ago, though, the Old English caeppe was, more broadly, a hood. It traces to the Late Latin cappa “woman’s head covering, cloak,” a descendant of caput — probably a shortened form of capitulare “headdress.” Cappa gave us both cap and cape. In short, it’s called a cap precisely because it covers your caput.

But we’ve had a thousand years find more uses for this world, and modern caps can refer to a myriad of things that either cover the top of something (like a soda bottle) or create an upper boundary (like a funding cap).

Decapitate

Unfortunately, to decapitate doesn’t mean “to knocking someone’s hat off.” This word uses the Latin prefix de- meaning “off” along with the original source of cap. The Latin decapitare “to behead” came into English through — no surprise here — French.

Capsize, Precipitate

If you’re boating at night and don’t happen to see that cape ahead, you might hit the rocks and capsize your vessel. The history of capsize is a bit nebulous, but it is probably related to the Spanich capuzar or Catalan cabussar, both meaning “to thrust the head underwater” and both tracing back to our Latin caput.

Going down headfirst isn’t limited to boats, of course. The Latin prefix prae- (or, in English, that pre- at the beginning of prefix), means “before”; place that little bit before caput (and then properly decline it), and we get praecipitatio, “falling headlong.” Since the 15th century, the “falling” part of that meaning has taken over, and precipitate and precipitation have found places in religious writings, alchemy and chemistry, and meteorology.

Chief

Two common and ancient metaphorical senses of head are “uppermost, most prominent,” as the head is to the body, and “leader, commander, decision-maker,” that is, the brains of the operation. Both metaphorical senses of caput, after some alteration in Vulgar Latin, were carried into Old French, and then English, as chief. While Modern English has kept the word unchanged as both “uppermost” (e.g., chief accomplishment) and “commander” (police chief), in Modern French, the word is now chef.

Captain

Outside of Vulgar Latin, the more staid and officially accepted form of caput “prominent, chief” was capitaneus. It kept its formality in Old French military use as capitaine, which then became the English captain.

Cadet (and Caddie)

At the other end of the command chain, we find the word cadet, today a student at a military college who is training to become an officer. Long ago, among French noble families, the eldest son was considered the first head of the family; younger sons were, in the Gascon tongue, the capdets — from Late Latin capitellum, meaning “little heads” — which got wider French usage as cadets. These cadets were often sent into the military to become officers, without rising through the ranks or attending military school (because what self-respecting aristocrat would make his son work among the common soldier?). Hence the word’s link to military officers.

The Scottish form of the same word, cadee, came to mean “messenger boy,” but was then adopted in the birthplace of golf for the boy in charge of a golfer’s clubs — in English, a caddie.

Corporal

France wasn’t the only nation with an army, of course. In Italy, the commander of a body of troops was called a caporale, combining the Latin caput with an Italian ending marking it as a noun or adjective. The word changed in French and then English to corporal, likely influenced by the idea that this lowest noncommissioned officer was in charge of a body (Latin corpus, Italian corpo) of troops.

Capo

Lovers of mafia films will recognize capo as a type of “captain” within the mob. Stemming from the Latin caput, capo is both an etymologically and organizational counterpart to captain.

Guitar players, however, will first associate capo not with the Mafia, but with a small device that attaches to the neck of the instrument and raises the pitch of all the strings simultaneously. The name of this type of capo is a shortening of capotasto, an Italian word that literally means “head key” or “head stop.”

Achieve

Returning to chief and chef for a moment — the French used the phrase a chef (venir), literally meaning “come to head” but used in the sense of “complete, get to the end.” This was compressed until it became the verb achever, which by the early 1300s had become the English achieve.

Five Capitals

The architectural capital: We’ve already covered the idea of caput meaning the top or uppermost part of a thing. In Latin, the top part of a column or pillar was called a capitellum “little head,” which became the Old French chapitel, the Anglo-French capitel, and eventually the English capital.

The typographic capital: The Latin adjective capitalis means “of the head,” which became the English adjective capital “principal, first.” As typography advanced, we began using what are now called uppercase and lowercase letters on certain words. While there have always been differing guidelines and styles for employing uppercase letters, one letter is always uppercase: The first letter of a new sentence. Because that letter comes at the head of a sentence, we call it a capital letter.

The geopolitical capital: Nations, states, and other geographical divisions have cities called capitals because those are the principal cities of government, where the heads of state do their work. (America’s Capitol, the building, takes its name from the Capitolium, a temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill in ancient Rome. It’s relationship to capital is likely but not certain.)

Legal capital: A connection between one’s head and one’s life was evident in both Old English and Latin. So capital came to describe crimes and punishments that carried the death penalty: capital crimes and capital punishment.

Financial capital: We’ve established the historical sense of capital to mean “principal.” In the financial sense, principal is the initial amount of a loan, as opposed to the interest (originally called usury). One might take a loan and combine it with their own and other investors’ money to kick off a new business. This collection of funds, the initial outlay that an entrepreneur hopes to build on, was called the capitalis pars “principal part.” Over time, this type of capital came to describe a company’s long-term assets.

Chattel and Cattle

The idea of capital as business property was picked up among French speakers and applied to other kinds of property used for profit, especially livestock — and the word changed with it. In Old French it became chatel, and in Old North French, it was catel. Both words found their way into English, as chattel and cattle.

Cabbage

Speaking of farms, one agricultural commodity that takes the form of a bundle of leaves the size and shape of a human head was called in Old French caboce, from a diminutive of caput. In Old North French, it became a caboche, which was adopted into English, and the ch shifted into a soft j sound, giving us cabbage. (Lettuce is head-shaped too, of course; its name ultimately comes from Latin lac “milk,” from the white juice of the plant.)

Chapter

Capitulum “little head” in Late Latin also came to be used to describe the principal divisions of a book. This became the Old French chapitle, then chapitre, and then the English chapter.

Biceps, Triceps, Quadriceps

The –ceps part of these muscles names is what comes from caput. These words come from the addition of the prefixes bis- “double,” tri- “three,” and quadri- “four,” creating words that mean “two-headed,” “three-headed,” and “four-headed.”

The “heads” in this anatomical sense are the more fixed or larger places where a muscle attaches to a bone. The names are accurate: The biceps, on the front of the upper arm, has two heads; the triceps, on the back of the upper arm, has three heads; and the quadriceps are a four-muscle group on the front of the thigh. (Muscle, of course, comes from a word meaning “little mouse,” and it can be fun to muse on the image of quadriceps muscles as “little four-headed mice.”)

Classically, biceps, triceps, and quadriceps are singular. We hoi polloi, who are used to that final s indicating a plural, have back-formed the singular words bicep, tricep, and quadricep. There are those, however, who insist that the original words should remain singular and that their plurals should be formed using either the standard English morphology (bicepses, tricepses, quadricepses) or the classical Latin forms (bicipites, tricipites, quadricipites).

And with that last flex, heading on to some other activity sounds like a capital idea.

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Comments

  1. This is the perfect continuation of ‘Giving Shape to Cape’. Lots of interesting words here. The connections of ‘chief’, ‘captain’ and ‘achieve’ and ‘chef’ aren’t ones we’d associate with each other. ‘Cadet’ and ‘Caddie’, ‘Chattel’ and ‘Cattle’ either. ‘Capital’ has an additional meaning (architectural capital) that I simply wasn’t aware of. All the others, yes.

    ‘Cabbage’ and ‘Chapter’, no idea until now. ‘Biceps’, ‘Triceps’ Quadriceps’ I basically knew, but not the muscle and mouse connections with each other. Somehow the three ‘ceps’ words seem incomplete without the ‘s’. I say we keep it.

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