The Latin root caput, for "head" or "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 title 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.

Caput is the term used to describe the central manor in an agricultural estate.

Caput is the name of the council or ruling body of the University of Cambridge prior to the constitution of 1856.

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

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