caprice [M17th] A caprice and hedgehogs seem far apart but if you put the Italian words capo ‘head’ and riccio ‘hedgehog’ together you get the word capriccio [E17th], or ‘hedgehog-head’—a head with the hair standing on end, like a hedgehog’s spines. This is what can happen if you are terrified by something, so capriccio, the source of English caprice, came to mean ‘horror or shuddering’. Over time this eventually became ‘a sudden start, a sudden change of mood’, perhaps influenced by Italian *caper. Compare horror.