[CAP sb.1]
1. Name for several birds having a white or light-colored patch on the head (see quots.).
1668. Charleton, Onomast., 78. Passeres … Montanus … the White-Cap.
1874. T. Belt, Nat. Nicaragua, 138. The intruder was the white-cap (Microchera parvirostris, Lawr.), the smallest of thirteen different kinds of humming-birds that I noticed around Santo Domingo.
1885. Swainson, Prov. Names Birds, 13. Redstart…. The male is called ‘whitecap’ in Shropshire, from its white forehead. Ibid., 22. Whitethroat … (from its grey head) … Whitecap.
2. pl. Local name for species of mushroom.
1818. Withering’s Brit. Pl. (ed. 6), IV. 282. Ag[aricus] Georgii.… Gathered in abundance for the London markets, where they are sold as Mushrooms, but by the more discriminating country people called White caps.
1866. Treas. Bot., White-caps,… Agaricus arvensis … Horse Mushroom.
3. A white-capped or crested wave; a breaker.
1773. Phil. Trans., LXIV. 458. None, or very few white-caps (or waves whose tops turn over in foam) appeared.
1838. Asa Gray, Lett. (1893), I. 71. We had a strong head wind…: the surface of the lake was covered with white-caps.
1883. C. H. Farnham, in Harper’s Mag., Aug., 375/1. Numerous reefs … marked by white-caps where the ebb tide rushed over them.
4. A person wearing a white cap; spec. one of a self-constituted body in the United States who commit outrages upon persons under the pretence of regulating public morals.
1891. Tablet, 13 June, 941. The Lynchers in such cases are usually called white-caps, regulators, &c.
1894. Westm. Gaz., 23 May, 2/3. A White Cap … disguises himself and performs his errands at night.
So White-capped a., wearing a white cap or caps; capped with foam, covered with white-crested waves.
1880. ‘Ouida,’ Moths, iii. White-capped old women looked on.
1895. Outing (U.S.), XXVI. 447/2. A white-capped sea.
1899. W. E. Cairnes, in Scribner’s Mag., XXV. 75/2. The whitecapped cavalry were caught unawares by French’s brigade.
