2974: Caper and Caprice—or Unrelated?? Feb 11, 2025

As discussed yesterday, chevron/chevon come from ‘goat’, in Old French as ‘chevron’ and Modern French chèvre for ‘goat’. Many other words come from its origin too, the Latin ‘caper’, including the English ‘caper’ (jumping around, goatly) and ‘capriole’ (jumping around, horsely), and others like ‘caprine’ ‘capricorn’, and probably ‘caprice’ meaning ‘a sudden start; a freight’, and then later also ‘a whim’ and eventually ‘a brief romance’. 

Probably is the operative word, because it, along with of course ‘capricious’ and the musical ‘capriccio’ have been linked to the Italian ‘caporiccio’, from capo +‎ riccio, meaning “curly head” with an idea that curly haired people act capriciously. Although goats also have curly heads of sorts, ‘caput’ (head) and ‘caper’ (goat) in Latin aren’t related. This is still overall less likely.