• IPA: /kæp/, [kʰæp]

Inherited from Middle English cappe, from Old English cæppe, from Late Latin cappa, itself from Latin caput.

cap (plural caps)

1. A close-fitting hat, either brimless or peaked.

   Hyponyms: see Thesaurus:headwear

   The children were all wearing caps to protect them from the sun.

2. A special hat to indicate rank, occupation, etc.
3. An academic mortarboard.
4. A protective cover or seal.

   He took the cap off the bottle and splashed himself with some cologne.

5. A crown for covering a tooth.

   He had golden caps on his teeth.

6. The summit of a mountain, etc.

   There was snow on the cap of the mountain.

7. An artificial upper limit or ceiling.

   Antonyms: floor

   We should put a cap on the salaries, to keep them under control.

8. The top part of a mushroom.
9. (toy) A small amount of percussive explosive in a paper strip or plastic cup for use in a toy gun.

   Billy spent all morning firing caps with his friends, re-enacting storming the beach at Normandy.

10. A small explosive device used to detonate a larger charge of explosives.

    He wired the cap to the bundle of dynamite, then detonated it remotely.

11. (slang) A bullet used to shoot someone.
    • 2001, Charles Jade, Jade goes to Metreon‎:

      Did he think they were going to put a cap in his ass right in the middle of Metreon?

12. (slang, originally, AAVE) A lie or exaggeration.

    no cap

    that's cap

13. (sport) A place on a national team; an international appearance.

    Rio Ferdinand won his 50th cap for England in a game against Sweden.

    • 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC ↗:

      "By the way, are you by any chance the Malone who is expected to get his Rugby cap for Ireland?" "A reserve, perhaps."

14. (obsolete) The top, or uppermost part; the chief.
    • c. 1605–1608, William Shakespeare, “The Life of Tymon of Athens”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC ↗, [Act IV, scene iii], page 93 ↗, column 2:

      Thou art the Cap / Of all the Fooles aliue.

15. (obsolete) A respectful uncovering of the head.
16. (zoology) The whole top of the head of a bird from the base of the bill to the nape of the neck.
17. (architecture) The uppermost of any assemblage of parts.

    the cap of column, door, etc.; a capital, coping, cornice, lintel, or plate

18. Something covering the top or end of a thing for protection or ornament.
19. (nautical) A collar of iron or wood used in joining spars, as the mast and the topmast, the bowsprit and the jib boom; also, a covering of tarred canvas at the end of a rope.
20. (geometry) A portion of a spherical or other convex surface.
21. A large size of writing paper.

    flat cap; foolscap; legal cap

22. (Appalachia) Popcorn.

• French: bonnet, casquette, (Quebec) tuque
• German: Mütze
• Italian: cuffia, cappuccio, berretto, berretta, cofia
• Portuguese: boné, barrete (1), quepe (2)
• Russian: ке́пка
• Spanish: gorro (without peak), gorra (with peak), cofia (nurse, waitress)

• Italian: cappello, berretto, bustina
• Russian: фура́жка

• French: chapeau, mortier
• Italian: tocco

• French: capsule, bouchon, capuchon, couvercle, opercule
• Italian: chiusura, chiusura di sicurezza, coppa, cappuccio, tappo
• Russian: колпачо́к

• French: couronne
• Italian: corona, capsula
• Russian: коро́нка

• French: sommet, cime
• Italian: cima
• Russian: верши́на

• French: plafond
• German: Obergrenze
• Italian: tetto
• Russian: ограниче́ние

• French: chapeau, tête, carpophore (scientific), pileus (scientific)
• German: Hut
• Italian: cappella
• Portuguese: chapéu, chapeleta, píleo
• Russian: шля́пка

• Italian: capsula
• Russian: писто́н
• Spanish: fulminante

• Russian: ка́псюль
• Spanish: fulminante, detonante

• Russian: масли́на

• French: calotte

• Portuguese: convocação

cap (caps, present participle capping; simple past and past participle capped)

1. (transitive) To cover or seal with a cap.
2. (transitive) To award a cap as a mark of distinction.
3. (transitive) To lie over or on top of something.
4. (transitive) To surpass or outdo.
5. (transitive) To set (or reach) an upper limit on something.

   cap wages.

6. (transitive) To make something even more wonderful at the end.

   That really capped my day.

7. (transitive, cricket) To select a player to play for a specified side.
8. (transitive, slang) To shoot (someone) with a firearm.

   Synonyms: pop a cap in someone's ass

   If he don't get outta my hood, I'm gonna cap his ass.

   In a school shooting, where some kid caps a bunch of other kids, where did he get the weapon? From a family member, probably their gun cabinet.

9. (intransitive, slang, originally, AAVE) To lie; to tell a lie.
10. (transitive, sports) To select to play for the national team.

    Peter Shilton is the most capped English footballer.

11. (transitive, obsolete) To salute by uncovering the head respectfully.
    • 1852, William Makepeace Thackeray, “I Go to Cambridge, and Do But Little Good There”, in The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. […] , volume I, London: […] Smith, Elder, & Company, […], →OCLC ↗, page 231 ↗:

      Tom never miſsed a lecture, and capped the proctor with the profoundeſt of bows.

12. To deprive of a cap.

Various clippings.

cap (plural caps)

1. (finance) Capitalization.
2. (informal) A capital letter.
3. (electronics) A capacitor.

   Parasitic caps.

   I had to replace the caps in that thing to get it to work again.

4. (colloquial) A recording or screenshot.(shortening of "capture").

   Anyone have a cap of the games last night?

5. (slang) A capsule of a drug.
   • 2012, Alex Wyndham Baker, Cursive:

     Glass bottles of liquid LSD; moist blocks of Manali charras and Malana cream; sachets of smack; a hundred caps of MDMA and a phial of Australian DMT; ampoules of medical morphine and a dense pad of four thousand Californian blotters.

6. (colloquial) A capitalist.
7. (anatomy) A capillary.
8. A caption.

cap (caps, present participle capping; simple past and past participle capped)

1. (transitive, informal) To convert text to uppercase.
2. (transitive) To take a screenshot or to record a copy of a video.
3. (transitive, video games) To take capture an objective, such as a flag or checkpoint.

From Scots cap, an alteration of earlier cop, from Middle English cop, from Old English copp, from Proto-West Germanic *kopp, from Proto-Germanic *kuppaz.

cap (plural caps)

1. (obsolete) A wooden drinking-bowl with two handles.

cap

1. Init of conservation action plan
2. Init of catabolite activator protein
3. (medicine) Init of community-acquired pneumonia
4. (comptheory) Init of consistency, availability, partition-tolerance three irreconcilable guarantees in distributed systems, a result known as Brewer's theorem.
5. Init of combat air patrol
6. Init of change acceleration process
7. Init of colors and placements

1. (European Union) Init of Common Agricultural Policy
2. (US) Init of Civil Air Patrol
3. Init of Colleague Assistance Program

1. Abbreviation of Capricorn

1. A nickname for the captain of a team, ship, etc.
   • 1967, Jan de Hartog, The Captain:

     "But listen, Cap!" he protested, momentarily falling out of his role as Midshipman Hornblower. "I haven't got any place else to go! This is where I sleep, where else do you want me to write my letters?"

2. A nickname for a man generally.

• Russian: кэп

• Russian: команди́р

cap (plural caps)

1. (astrology, informal) Clipping of Capricorn