Given that so many fancy food terms come from French-think of sous vide, chiffonade, crudités, and even à la carte and the term haute cuisine itself- another surprise is that chef by itself has no specific connection to food or cooking at all: it's the French spelling of the word that gave us chief, meaning" "boss" or "leader." The' "'skilled cook" meaning of chef is an abbreviated form of chef de cuisine, meaning' "kitchen head" or "kitchen chief." Like some other words that have come to English from French, chef was borrowed twice; the first time it became chief with a general meaning of "leader,' " and then, some five centuries later in the 180Qs, it was borrowed again with the more specific meaning. Typically, these more recent borrowings retain French spellings. Chef itself meant "head" in Old French, and comes from the Latin word for "head," caput.