In a Word: Giving Shape to Cape

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.

There doesn’t seem to be an obvious connection between the type of cape worn by some superheroes (and some supermodels) and the geographical cape found at the tip of some land masses. But there is an etymological connection; we just have to use our head to find it.

Both types of cape trace their origin to the Latin word for “head,” caput, a word — in Latin and in all the languages it influenced — whose senses have expanded metaphorically in all sorts of directions. For example, Merriam-Webster includes 21 senses of head, with twice as many sub-senses, and that’s only for cape as a noun!

One of those metaphorical senses of head (and caput) is the part of an object that projects the farthest. To sailors, this perfectly describes a promontory, a cliff or high piece of land that juts out into the sea. Caput became a name for such a geologic feature, which in Old French became a cap and then the English cape. Not to put too fine a point on it, but a promontory is also known as a headland.

Once people began naming individual geological features capes, those names soon indicated the larger geographical areas around that feature — like Cape Horn, Cape Fear, and the Cape of Good Hope and the city that grew around it, Cape Town.

The type of cape Superman wears started from the same linguistic source but took a different etymological course.

From caput “head” came the Late Latin cappa, which originally meant “a woman’s head covering,” but over time its senses expanded to mean “a hooded cloak” and then, losing the inherent relation to the head, just “a cloak.” This type of cape probably came into English through the Spanish capa.

Early cloaks and capes were normally completely enveloping outer garments, but fashion changes — while cloaks largely continued to wrap completely around a wearer, capes opened up in front so that, today, a swath of cloth that hangs from a person’s shoulders can be called a cape even if it doesn’t cover the wearer’s shoulders.

Edna Mode of The Incredibles makes a good argument for why capes are a bad idea. But imagine you don’t take her advice, and then you find yourself being pursued by some ne’er-do-well. The bad guy takes hold of your cape, which was trailing almost horizontally behind you. What do you do to get away?

You take the cape off and run, leaving the villain clutching only a bolt of cloth. And that’s where the word escape comes from: Latin ex- means “off,” so when you remove your cape to escape, you are literally ex-caping, or excappare in Vulgar Latin.