What does capo mean?
A capo is most familiarly a small spring-loaded or screw-tightened clamp that guitarists fasten across the fingerboard to shorten all six strings at once. By raising the pitch of every open string uniformly, it lets a player use familiar chord shapes while playing in a higher key, making it one of the most widely used accessories in folk, pop, and acoustic music. The word has a second, very different life: in American organized-crime terminology, a capo (short for the Italian capodecina) is a mid-level Mafia boss who directs a crew of soldiers on behalf of the family's underboss. Both senses derive directly from Italian capo, meaning 'head' or 'leader', itself inherited from Latin caput. Whether clipped onto a guitar neck or heading a criminal crew, a capo is always something that sits at the top and controls what lies beneath it.
nounA clamp-like device fitted across the strings of a guitar or similar fretted instrument to raise their overall pitch by shortening the vibrating length. Also, a high-ranking member of a Mafia family who commands a crew of soldiers.
- A movable clamp fitted across the fingerboard of a guitar or other stringed instrument to shorten all the strings at once and raise their pitch.
- A ranking member of an organized crime family (especially the Mafia) who leads a group of soldiers within the hierarchy.
"She clamped the capo onto the second fret and played the song in a higher key."
"He slipped a capo onto the third fret so he could sing it comfortably."
"The trial exposed how each capo controlled a separate crew of operatives."
The standard English plural adds -s; the Italian plural 'capi' occasionally appears in writing about organized crime but is rare in everyday use.
"Several capos were confiscated from the stage during setup."
The same Italian word that means 'head' gave us both the gadget that changes your guitar's key and the title for a Mafia boss who literally runs his own crew.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of capo
The word comes from Italian capo, meaning 'head' or 'chief', which descends from Latin caput ('head'). It entered English in the twentieth century along two routes: musicians borrowed it as the name for the pitch-raising clamp (originally called the 'capo d'astro' or 'capodastro'), while writers and law enforcement adopted it from Sicilian-American Mafia terminology for a crew boss. The same Latin root caput also yields English words such as 'captain', 'capital', and 'chief'.
Related word forms
How capo is actually used
Both senses are informal-to-neutral in register. The musical sense dominates everyday usage; the crime sense appears mostly in journalism and popular culture. Plural is simply 'capos', though Italian purists sometimes use the pluralized Italian form 'capi'.
Easily confused with capo
A cape is a sleeveless garment or a headland of land, whereas a capo is either a guitar device or a Mafia rank.
A capon is a castrated rooster raised for meat, unrelated to the guitar accessory or Mafia title.