Etymology: Old English cæppe , < late Latin cappa ‘cap’ (Italian cappa , Provençal capa , Spanish capa , Portuguese capa , Old North French and Picard cape , French chape , all meaning ‘cloak, cape, or cope’). Isidore, a636, has ( xix. xxxi. 3, De ornamentis capitis feminarum) ‘cappa..quia capitis ornamentum est’; Diez cites cappa from a document of 660, and an ancient gloss ‘cappa mitra’. Medieval Latin used indiscriminately cappa and capa (the latter, however, much more frequently), and commonly in the sense of ‘cloak, cope’; Chron. Treverti anno 1146, has ‘caracalla (i.e. a long cloak with a hood) quam nunc capam vocamus’. The presumption is that the name was transferred from a woman's cap, hood, or head-covering, as Isidore used it, to the ‘hood’ of a cloak, and then to a cloak or ‘cape’ having such a hood, and thus to a priest's ‘cope’. The sense ‘head-covering, cap, hat’ was at an early period in Romanic appropriated by the diminutive cappellum , cappellus , in Italian cappello , Spanish capelo , Provençal capel , Old French capel , chapel , French chapeau , ‘hat’. (The sense ‘little or short cloak’ was retained by the feminine diminutive cappella , capella , Italian cappella , Provençal, Portuguese capella , Spanish capilla , Old North French capelle , French chapelle , until this received the curiously transferred sense chapel n.) An explanation of capa , < capere to take, ‘quia quasi totum capiat hominem’ (because it takes as it were the whole man) is erroneously cited by Du Cange, and many after him, from Isidore. It is really from Papias c1053; and is manifestly a ‘popular etymology’ of a late age, after the application had passed from ‘cap’ to ‘cloak with a hood’. (Mahn thinks that cappa may be of Iberian origin.) The evidence of Old English is important, since it points to two distinct Latin types, viz. cappa (which gave cæppe , cappe , cap ), and cāpa which gave cāpe , cōpe ; the latter is also witnessed by Icelandic kápa ‘cowled cloak, cloak with a hood’: see cope n.¹ It looks as if cappa, the living Romanic form, was first adopted in English (say from Italy) in its 7th cent. sense, and gave cæppe, and that at a later time cāpa, so common in medieval Latin, was introduced specially for the ecclesiastical dress. The latter is not actually evidenced in Old English, but it occurs in Layamon, and was in the language early enough to undergo the phonetic change of Old English á into Middle English ō. Old High German (late) had chappa ‘cloak with a hood’; so Middle High German kappe, Middle Dutch cappe (both rarely in sense ‘cap’); modern German kappe, Dutch kap ‘cap’. Words to be distinguished are (1) Cap, Old English cæppe, Latin cappa; (2) Cap, Scottish dialect form of cop (like tap, stap, for top, stop); (3) Cape, early Middle English form of cope, retained in northern dialect and Scottish as cape, caip (compare early Middle English and northern pape, Scottish paip = pope); (4) Cape, modern English, < French cape, Spanish capa cloak, the same word in origin as 3, but re-introduced in a new connection; (5) Cape, French cap, Italian capo headland; (6) Cop, Old English cop, copp top, summit, also cup; (7) Cope, early Middle English cāpe, Icelandic kápa, Latin cāpa. In Middle English cape also occasionally appears for cappe, cap.

Etymology: Etymology uncertain: not easily connected with cap n.¹, and being exclusively English, it cannot be the Scotch cap n.³

Etymology: apparently a later Scots form of cop (as in tap, top, etc.) < Old English copp cup, vessel, or Old Norse kopp-r cup, small vessel used in the dairy; but the form caup, unless merely phonetic, raises difficulties. A medieval Latin caupus is rendered by Ælfric ‘cuppe’.

Etymology: Shortened < captain n.

Etymology: Shortened < capsule n.

Etymology: < cap n.¹

Etymology: apparently < Old French cape-r to seize, take, compare cape ‘bref de prise de corps’ (Godefroy): see cape n.⁴ But compare also capias n., the name of a writ; and cape v.², < Dutch kapen to take.