chapka

English

Etymology 1

The chapka of a subaltern in the Austro-Hungarian 2nd Uhlan Regiment

From Polish czapka (“cap”) or Czech čapka (“cap”). Doublet of shapka.

Alternative forms

• czapka

Noun

chapka (plural chapkas)

1. A type of hat worn by 19th-century Polish cavalry, consisting of a high, four-pointed cap with regimental insignia on the front, and now associated with Polish independence and nationalism.

Translations

type of hat

• German: Tschapka (de) f
• Ido: shapko (io)

Further reading

• Czapka on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Etymology 2

From Russian ша́пка (šápka).

Noun

chapka (plural chapkas)

1. Alternative form of shapka.
   • 1985, Jerry Sage, Sage, Miles Standish Press, →ISBN, page 397:

     She laughed at our surprise, pulled off her fur chapka cap, and shook loose long blonde hair.

   • 1990, Jacques Derogy, translated by A. M. Berrett, Resistance & Revenge: The Armenian Assassination of Turkish Leaders Responsible for the 1915 Massacres and Deportations, Routledge, published 2017, →ISBN:

     On July 18, 1921, shortly before midnight, the Tatar leader was returning to the Pera Palace Hotel, accompanied by his brother and four other people, all wearing the traditional Russian chapka, after a last drink at a kiosk in the nearby public garden.

   • 1994 August 29, New York, volume 27, number 34, page 92:

     Wool-and-faux-fur chapka by Rei Kawakubo, $775 at Barneys and Comme des Garçons Boutique (116 Wooster Street).

   • 1995, Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to Six Cold War Presidents, Seattle, Wash., London: University of Washington Press, published 2001, →ISBN, page 328:

     So I took off my fur hat, a classic Russian chapka made of beaver that I had bought in Moscow, and gave it to him as my “Siberian gift.”

   • 1995, Bruce Olds, Raising Holy Hell, New York, N.Y.: Picador USA, →ISBN, page 167:

     Clad in a cassinette nightshirt out at the elbows, a rabbit’s fur chapka tugged down past his ears, and a pair of weevil-gnawed moccasins worn through at the toes, he appears much the bedraggled half-wit, but lolled tailorwise atop his swaybacked paint in the middle of Main Street polishing off the last of his gingersnaps, the dust-talced, squint-eyed old veteran is listening fully mindful.

   • 1997, Yves Béon, translated by Yves Béon and Richard L. Fague, edited by Michael J. Neufeld, Planet Dora: A Memoir of the Holocaust and the Birth of the Space Age, Westview Press, HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., →ISBN, page 11:

     Jacky puts his cap back on his head. It’s a Russian chapka, a fur hat with its ears turned up into the top, giving him the look of a caricature of a president of the Court of Justice.

   • 1998, Krystyna Dobrzyńska-Cantwell, “An Unusual Diplomat”: Dobrzyński Biography, Polish Cultural Foundation, →ISBN, page 26:

     The full dress of the regiment included a fur chapka and a full length fur cloak. On one of the few occasions that King Edward VII met Nicholas II they both donned, as a courtesy, the uniforms of their respective regiments […]

   • 2004, Alexandre Skirda, translated by Paul Sharkey, Nestor Makhno — Anarchy’s Cossack: The Struggle for Free Soviets in the Ukraine 1917–1921, Edinburgh, Oakland, Calif., London: AK Press, →ISBN, page 243:

     Mounted on small, highly strung horses and armed to the teeth — carbines slung across the shoulder, saber by their side and daggers at their belts, their chests crisscrossed by leather ammunition belts, and their heads topped by enormous fur chapkas … they had an appearance that was unsettling, I might even say unnerving.

   • 2006, Russell Warren Howe, False Flags, 3rd edition, West Conshohocken, Pa.: Infinity Publishing, →ISBN, page 11:

     On the escalator coming out, a youth stepped in front of Alec and offered him a Soviet Air Force officer's winter chapka in aviation-blue acrylic, with pilot's wings.

   • 2007, Hugh McLeave, White Pawn on Red Square, Raleigh, N.C.: Boson Books, →ISBN, page 87:

     She walked past me, wearing one of her wigs under a fur chapka.

   • 2011, Rod Rees, The Demi-Monde: Winter, Quercus, →ISBN:

     But there were compensations, the principal ones being that during Winter it was permissible for him to wander through the streets of the Rookeries with the collar of his coat turned high, his fox-fur chapka pulled hard down on his head and a thick woollen sharf wrapped around his face.

   • 2013, Michèle Abramoff, translated by Linda Campbell, Miss Jensen and Her Labrador: A Detective Novel, →ISBN, page 157:

     As it happened, the lorry drivers loved the detours, especially the driver most often sent to the East, whom the Russians, with their legendary generosity, welcomed like a king and sent back home to France with a fur chapka or an astrakhan hat, gifted moreover with a bottle of vodka or a box of caviar.

   • 2014, Geneviève Lefebvre, translated by Katie Shireen Assef, “Such a Pretty Little Girl”, in John McFetridge, Jacques Filippi, editors, Montreal Noir, Akashic Books, →ISBN:

     Her coat is unbuttoned, her lovely head covered with a fur chapka hat; she faces the cold like an enemy from whom one must hide any sign of fear.

   • 2014, Uwe Tellkamp, translated by Mike Mitchell, The Tower: Tales from a Lost Country, Allen Lane, Penguin Group, →ISBN:

     A man was squatting down on the tender, his face smeared with ashes and wearing a fur chapka with the earmuffs tied under his chin; […] The women wrapped in headscarves, many of the men wearing Russian fur chapkas, pedestrians dressed in grey and brown, hurrying along, hunched up, towards the city centre, to the shops under the concrete slabs of the Königstein and Lilienstein luxury hotels.

   • 2020, Michael McCarthy, The Hidden Hindenburg: The Untold Story of the Tragedy, the Nazi Secrets, and the Quest to Rule the Skies, Lyons Press, The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., →ISBN, page 184:

     A prisoner named Jacky, his head constantly covered with a Russian chapka, rolled a small, squeaking cart throughout the tunnels.

Anagrams

• pachak

Polish

Etymology

From chapać +‎ -ka.

Pronunciation

• (Greater Poland):
  • (Kociewie) IPA^(key): /ˈxap.ka/

Noun

chapka f

1. (Kociewie) Synonym of ochota [with na (+ accusative) ‘for what’]

   mieć chapkę na coś ― to have a hankering for something

Further reading

• Gustaw Pobłocki (1887) “chapka”, in Słownik kaszubski z dodatkiem idyotyzmów chełmińskich i kociewskich (in Polish), 2 edition, Chełmno, page 149