K äppi -- end piece of bread?

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:22 PM -0400 4/26/09, Michael Sheehan wrote:
>A caller to my language program mentioned that her mother-in-law's family
>used to call the end pieces of bread "the copy." Working on sound alone, I
>came across the Germanic Käppi, a head covering or cap. I could understand an
>analogy being constructed between an end piece of bread and a cap, but is
>there a real or a fancied connection here?

I knew the French word "képi" (that's _ke[acute
accent]pi_, if the diacritic didn't come
through), for 'a French military cap, slightly
tapering, with a flat top which slopes towards
the front, and a horizonal peak' < OED, which
tells me that it comes from the Swiss German
_käppi_ you mention, which in turn is a
diminutive of _kappe_ 'cap'.  No indication that
it's used for bread-ends, although the shape
connection is there, or would be depending on the
shape of the loaf.

LH

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