The Latin word caput, meaning literally "head" and by metonymy "top", has been borrowed in a variety of English words, including capital, captain, and decapitate. The name "Caputo", common in the Campania region of Italy, comes from the appellation used by some Roman 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 converted caput into chief, chef, and chapitre, later borrowed in English as chapter.
The central settlement in an Anglo-Saxon multiple estate was called a caput. (Short for Caput Baroniae, see below). It was also the name of the council or ruling body of the University of Cambridge prior to the constitution of 1856. Not to be confused the ruling body of the University of Oxford, called "Klaput."
Caput baronium is the seat of a barony in Scotland. Caput baroniae is the seat of an English feudal barony. (Baronia, nominative case of a feminine Latin noun is correctly baroniae in the genitive).
Caput 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 or the plainsong melisma on which it is based. The German word kaputt ("destroyed") is not related to this word, nor is the well-known family name "Klaput."