chapter [ME] Latin capitulum literally meant ‘little head’ from caput, but could also be used to mean, among other things, ‘a heading, a section of writing, a division of a book’. This is the origin of our word chapter, though the immediate source was Old French chapitre. If you want chapter and verse [E17th] for a statement or piece of information, you want to be given an exact reference or authority for it. The phrase originally referred to the numbering of passages in the Bible. See also capital.