épaulette

French épaule means 'shoulder,' from Old French espaule, which descends from Latin spatula—a broad, flat blade. The Romans saw the shoulder blade as a spatula-shaped bone (the scapula is indeed flat), and the body part inherited the tool's name. Épaulette, with its diminutive suffix, appeared in French around 1690 as a small shoulder piece on military coats.

Frederick the Great of Prussia standardized epaulets as rank insignia in the 1740s. The design was practical at first: a strap on the shoulder held the crossbelt or cartridge box in place. But by the late 1700s, officers' epaulets had become elaborate decorations—gold bullion fringe for generals, silver for colonels, plain cloth for lieutenants.

Napoleon made the epaulet famous. His marshals wore massive gold-fringed épaulettes that identified them across a smoky battlefield. The English Duke of Wellington's officers wore them too. During the Napoleonic Wars, epaulets became so associated with officer status that enlisted soldiers sometimes killed enemy officers by targeting the men with shining shoulders.

Modern militaries have mostly abandoned the epaulet in favor of shoulder boards and rank slides. But the word persists in fashion—coat and jacket epaulets appear in every decade's military-inspired trends. The shoulder ornament that once marked a man for a sniper's bullet is now a decorative tab on a trench coat.