What’s the relationship between a caper (“a crime, esp. an organized robbery”) and a caper (“a pickled flower bud of the caper plant”)? I wish I had a good story about an elaborate pickled flower bud heist, but I think it’s just a coincidence. Caper the plant comes from the Latin capparis, borrowed from the Greek kapparis, the name for the plant and the food it produces. Caper the crime comes from the Latin capra, or goat – an animal that, at least according to the English usage of its name, started with playful leaping, progressed to pranking, and finally descended into thievery.