Day 4, and I’m going to talk about three or four very similar words:
Capelet, capelin, capeline, capellet.
They look as though they should have something in common, don’t they? But, apart from all have cap- (from the Latin for head) as the root, they’re pretty dissimilar.
A capelet is a small cape, of the wearable variety (not a headland, as in Cape St. Vincent, but a cloak). A capelet, which can also be spelt capellet, is also a veterinary term for a cyst-like swelling on a horse’s elbow or hock. (Confused yet? You will be…)
A capelin or caplin is a small fish (Mallotus villosus) of the smelt family, used as bait – from its Latin name you probably wouldn’t want to eat it. Apparently, it’s abundant off Newfoundland, or it was once; no fish are abundant anywhere these days, whatever the EU try and tell us (I’m a diver – I’ve seen the devastation). But I digress.
A capeline or capelline is a small iron skullcap worn by archers. I guess it afforded some protection while not ruining your sightlines or weighing so much you couldn’t walk into battle with it on; it sounds very uncomfortable, though. They both also mean a light woollen hood for evening wear (iron skullcap… woollen hood… no, it doesn’t work for me either). And also – wait for it – a surgical bandage for the head. You’d have to be careful not to get them muddled up, wouldn’t you, and end up at a ball in your surgical bandage -?!? Context is all.
If you’re old enough to remember the incomparable Frank Muir and Patrick Campbell on Call My Bluff back in the ’70s, you can see what fun they’d have had with these words. The possibilities for confusion are wonderful, especially once Mr Campbell started stammering over all those c’s and p’s. The trouble is, there are too many definitions for one limited set of letters, rather than the other way around. If somebody gave you the three definitions of capeline/capelline, which would you plump for? I don’t think I’d believe in the skullcap, and I’m sure the bandage should have a more medical-sounding name, so it would have to be the hood. But when was it in fashion? I’d love to see a picture of one.
Then there’s the question of how it came to have a name so similar to the fish. Their name is French, which is quite normal for that bit of Canada. Does it derive from mettre a la cape, which is the French (nautical) term for “heave to”? You’d have to do that to haul in your catch, in a small boat. Or maybe the smelt were often found under headlands (cap, in French), where currents bring a ready supply of food to fish and invertebrates. Maybe, to get a bit fanciful, a shoal of them looks like a silver cape. I don’t know, and my French dictionary is too small to say.
And as for the swelling on the horse’s elbow or hock (apparently the most common cause is bruising caused in lying down) – according to Webster’s 1913 dictionary, freely quoted all over the internet, the word derives from the French capelet meaning small cape. And so we’re back to square one, not much the wiser.
I’ll try and find something more conclusive for tomorrow! Meanwhile, please feel free to comment.
Sources:
Chambers Dictionary, 11th Edition, London 2008.
Larousse French-English dictionary, Paris 1990.
Webster’s Dictionary, 1913, quoted on en.wiktionary.org/wiki/capellet (accessed 2.2.15).