capit-, capt-, cap-, cep-, ceps-, chapt-, chef, cip-
(Latin: head; leader, chief, or first)
It may be surprising to see that a "captain" and a "chef" both belong to the same word family; however, a captain is, of course, the "head of a company of military soldiers", and a "chef is the captain of a group of cooks".
A chef, especially to those who love good food, is not a lowly official; and when it is remembered that the old saying that "an army travels on its stomach", a chef is every bit as important as a captain.
When the French borrowed words from Latin, they frequently used soft sounds. These French words, with their softer sounds, then made their way into the English language. At the same time, English borrowed words directly from Latin. So it is that in English we often have two words which share the same root, but which have different, though related, forms and meanings.
Don't confuse the words in this capit-, capt- unit with those in the cap-, cip-, "catch, seize" unit.
Dolor capitis can also be due to ntal suffering or anguish
The cape was an ordinary article of clothing. When a person was attacked and the cape grasped, he would squirm out of it, leaving the attacker holding the cape. Breaking loose and fleeing was an "escape"; and so leaving "out of the cape" or an ex cappa.
2. A square of cloth, or absorbent paper, used primarily to wipe areas of the face; especially, the nose.
3. Etymology: from hand + kerchief, "cloth for covering the head"; from Old French couvrechief, literally, "cover head"; from couvrir "to cover" + chief, "head".
The origin of kaput presented by "etymologists" seems to be inconsistent and even irrational
1. A change of meaning of the Latin caput occurred in German, in which kaputt now means "wrecked" or "broken". Germanic burial squads in the Middle Ages counted each corpse as a "head", or caput, so the word came to mean "broken, wrecked, or unserviceable".
2. Capot was borrowed into English directly from French as early as the seventeenth century as a noun signifying the winning of all the tricks in piquet (a card game) and other games.
In German this same capot was transliterated as kaput, and from the sense of having lost a game, German kaput developed the senses of "finished" and "broken".
3. Informal, "finished, dead, done for, broken (of a device or machine)".
From 1895, borrowing of German kaputt, probably abstracted from the earlier phrase capot machen, a partial translation by false interpretation of faire in the French faire capot, "be defeated", from its use in the card game of piquit where the phrase refers to losing all the tricks in a game; ultimately from capot cover or bonnet, from Middle French cape cloak.
