The Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 word caput, meaning literally "head" and by metonymy

Metonymy

Metonymy is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept...

 "top", has been borrowed in a variety of English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 words, including capital, captain, and decapitate. The name "Caputo", common in the Campania

Campania

Campania is a region in southern Italy. The region has a population of around 5.8 million people, making it the second-most-populous region of Italy; its total area of 13,590 km² makes it the most densely populated region in the country...

 region of Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, comes from the appellation used by some Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 military generals, and a variant form has surfaced more recently in the title Capo ( or Caporegime), the head of La Cosa Nostra. The French language

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 converted caput into chief, chef, and chapitre, later borrowed in English as chapter.

Caput is the term used to describe the central settlement in an Anglo-Saxon multiple estate

Anglo-Saxon multiple estate

An Anglo-Saxon multiple estate was a large landholding controlled from a central location with surrounding subsidiary settlements. These estates were present in the early Anglo-Saxon period, but fragmented into smaller units in the late Anglo-Saxon period...

. (Short for Caput Baroniae, see below).

Caput is the name of the council or ruling body of the University of Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

 prior to the constitution of 1856.

Caput baronium is the seat of a barony in Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

.

Caput baroniae

Caput baroniae

In English customs, the Caput baroniae was the ancient, or chief seat or castle of a nobleman, which was not to be divided among the daughters, in case there be no son to inherit. Instead, it was to descend entirely to the eldest daughter, caeteris filiabus aliunde satisfactis....

is the seat of an English feudal barony. (Baronia, nominative case of a feminine Latin noun is correctly baroniae in the genitive).

It is also used in medicine to describe any headlike protuberance on an organ or structure, such as the caput humeri

In music, caput may refer to the Missa Caput

Missa Caput

The Missa Caput was a musical setting of the Roman Catholic mass, dating from the 1440s, by an anonymous English composer. It circulated widely on the European continent in the mid-15th century, and was one of the best-loved musical works of the early Renaissance in Europe, judging by the number...

 or the plainsong

Plainsong

Plainsong is a body of chants used in the liturgies of the Catholic Church. Though the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Catholic Church did not split until long after the origin of plainchant, Byzantine chants are generally not classified as plainsong.Plainsong is monophonic, consisting of a...

 melisma on which it is based.

Caput is not to be confused with "kaput," which means "destroyed" or "broken" in German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

(where it is correctly spelled "kaputt").