Caption

(1) A taking, or seizing; an arrest.

The word is no longer used in this sense. (2) The heading of a legal instrument^ in which is shown when, where, and by what authority it was taken, found, or executed. Principally used in respect to indictments.

See, as to requisites, 8 Gray (Mass.) 454; 1 South. (N. J.) 46.

This meaning, now the general one, is not justified by the derivation, which is from capere, to take, and not from caput, a head. In the English practice, when an inferior court, in obedience to the writ of certiorari, returns an indictment into the king's bench, it is annexed to the caption, then called a "schedule," and the caption concludes with stating that "it is presented in manner and form as appears in a certain indictment thereto annexed," and the caption and indictment are returned on separate parchments.

1 Wm. Saund. 309, note 2.. CAPTIVE.

A prisoner of war.