Cappuccino

Served with a foamy head of milk, the dark coffee known as cappuccino takes its name from an order of friars known as the Capuchins. The beverage is so called either because its foamy head resembles the partly-sheared heads of the Capuchins or because a Brazilian order of Capuchins specialized in growing coffee beans in the eighteenth century. The Capuchins themselves derived their name from cappuccio, the Italian name for a peaked hood (in 1528, Pope Clement VII made such a hood the official headgear of the Capuchins). The name of this hood, cappuccio, was in turn an augmentative of the Italian cuppa, meaning cloak, and thus cappuccio, Capuchin, and cappuccino all literally mean big cloak. These words are also, therefore, related to chapel: the Italian cappella—which became the English chapel—originated as the name of the shrine housing the holy cloak—or cappa—of St. Martin. Later on, when chapels became common, the choral music performed in them tended to be unaccompanied by musical instruments and thus such performances came to be called a cappella, meaning in the chapel.


 


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