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, 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’, perhaps influenced by Italian caper
我们在用caprice一词时，一般是不会立刻联想到刺猬和山羊的。可是它们在caprice的词义发展中却起了一定作用。caprice直接借自法语caprice，但却源于意大利语capriccio。该意大利词由capo‘head’（头）和riccio‘hedgehog’（刺猬）两部分组成，字面义是“刺猬头”，含有head with hair stand-ng on end（毛骨悚然）或fright（惊吓）等义，因为人在受惊吓时毛发就会竖起，正像刺猬的刺一样。以后capriccio因前半部capr形似意大利词capra（山羊）而与山羊的特征相联系，故被赋予了英语caprice至今还在使用的“反复无常”、“多变”、“任性”等义。原意大利词capriccio也被英语直接吸收，用作音乐术语，指“随想曲”。