Meaning of chapka | Babel Free

Definitions

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

Equivalents

Examples

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

“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.”

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

“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.””

“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.”

“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.”

“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 […]”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

CEFR level