On Howard Stern today, Artie was saying he bought a “goo-pah-leen” at the ballpark last night. He was referring to a wool cap with a pom-pom.
None of the cast had ever heard the word and some guy called in saying it was an italian word and the “pah-leen” part was the word for “ball” like the “palina” in bocce ball?
What the hell is this word?
How do you spell it?
Who says it?
Is it really italian?
“cappello” is Italian for hat. I know that doesn’t help, but…
WAG: I have an Italian-American friend who grew up in New York City. Anyroad, she pronounces “canolli” more like “guh-NOL”. Is it possible that the word you heard was actually some kind of diminutive form of capello, maybe “capellino” or something, with the same pronunciation process at work (initial “c” becomes “g”, final vowel gets swallowed?)
In poking about, the only spellings I could get hits from so far are “gopaleen”, which refers to a pseudonym of an irish writer, and “goopaline” which is apparently used in the context you mention, but only one one single hit here:
Bolding mine.
Clearly, this word exists, but appears to be rare, and/or spelled oddly. I’ll keep on looking.
I make no claims about the correctness of my spelling. That was pure phonetics, but seems to jive with how I’d pronounce goopaline.
copaline
n : partly mineralized copal dug from the ground
I cannot find a spelling that works 
I’m pretty sure that meowpossum has it right and that it’s a New York / New Jersey (think Tony Soprano!) pronunciation of cappellino.
Italian-Americans in the Northeast USA arrived predominantly from Southern Italy (Naples, Calabria, Sicily), where there is a tendency to drop the final vowel (or make it a schwa at most) rather than pronounce it fully as in Northern Italy. Other differences between what is considered “Standard” Italian (i.e. Northern) and the NY-NJ pronunciation are the pronunciation shifts “o->oo”, “k->g”, and “zz (ts)-> soft z”.
Manicotti -> Manigott’
Mozzarella -> Moozarell’ (or even Moozadell’)
Cannoli -> Ganool’ (cf meowpossum’s friend’s guh-NOL)
Calamari -> Galamad’,
hence Cappellino -> Goopalin’ is not too much of a stretch. Google doesn’t show it because it’s not a proper spelling, thus presumably rarely written, although one can find a few entries for “Manigott” and “Moozadell” (the latter mainly because one of the episodes of The Sopranos is called The Telltale Moozadell).
In Italy itself, “Cappellino” can be used to refer to a baseball-style cap. Since New York Italians already have a term for “baseball cap”, it’s possible that the reference shifted to a wool cap with pom-pom as in the OP.
Don’t forget…
Pasta Fagiole -> Pasta Fah - ZHOOL or Fah - ZOOL
As one trained in classical Italian art songs, I cringe every time I hear that popular bastardization.
Peace.
That explains “paesan’” for paesano … nifty.
This must be part of the reason behind the pronunciation of rarely-written “fongool” for “Kiss my ass; eff you” or similar. Cecil once reported that “fongool” was short for va fare en culo (roughly “do it in the ass”).
That would be the Straight Dope Classic Column here, although the phrase is actually “va a fare in culo”.
Of course, one man’s “bastardization” is often another’s “correct pronunciation”. Most renditions of the Neapolitan song “O Sole Mio” that I’ve heard clearly pronounce the final vowels of each word in the title, whereas, from this site:
Although most of the Italian immigrants to the US were from Southern Italy, personal experience in Northern California (particularly San Francisco) suggests that immigration here contained a strong – and perhaps dominant – Northern Italian component (I can’t find a definitive cite as of now). I don’t recall ever hearing the “Manigott / Moozadell / Ganool” variants in the Western US.
[QUOTE=Q.E.D.]
In poking about, the only spellings I could get hits from so far are “gopaleen”, which refers to a pseudonym of an irish writer.QUOTE]
That would be Flann O’Brien. Highly recommended. Had to chime in there, because I swiped my username from one of his books. End of highjack, carry on please.
I’m not an expert, but I believe Trunk was correct in his original proposal of palina, which means “little ball.” Given the description of the hat in question, we could explain this word as a composition of the Southern Italian words ‘cu’="with + ‘palin’=“little ball”. ‘Cupalin’ would then be a hat “with a little ball” on it. Keeping in mind that Southern Italian has unaspirated voiceless plosives, which usually sound voiced to English-speaking American ears (i.e. ‘k’ sounds like ‘g’ to Americans since English has ‘kh’ for ‘k’), ‘cupalin’ is an exact match for Trunk’s “gupaleen.” How does that sound to everyone?
I’m into linguistics and it sounds very plausible to me.
Welcome to the boards. Stick around.
From Wikipedia, “La coppola (coppula in lingua siciliana e dialetto calabrese. . . ) è un cappello tradizionale siciliano, calabrese e sardo, solitamente in tweed” (The coppola, coppula in Sicilian and Calabrese, is a traditional Sicialian, Calabrian, and Sardinian hat, usually in tweed." The regular diminutive of coppula would be coppulina. With the regular sound changes mentioned above, goppulin’ sounds plausibly Southern Italian to me.
The Irish -ín is a common diminutive, so in Irish it would be a "small gopul, but Irish words rarely have medial -p- and I can’t think of anything that would fit.
The traditional Sicilian hat - coppola - is a flat cap similar to what might know be called a Kangol. The OP mentions a ball on top. That sounds to me like an old time golfer’s hat and I picture Groucho Marx instead of Howard Stern.
I can’t understand why the word would be used to describe a wool hat with a pom-pom. If Howard were Italian I might think that he used the term to describe all hats, but he probably has Germanic heritage.
If the hat in question is a simple wool toque, I have a vague recollection that the Canadians have a word specifically for the type with on ball on top.
Let me dispel the mystery. I am a third generation, Italian New Yorker of Neopolitan dissent, am an opera singer and have studied Italian. I remember that my grandfather always referred to his fitted, woolen, winter hat (not cap and with or without a Pom Pom) as a Cupolone (Coo-pa-loon). After some internet research paired with my study of the Italian language, I was recalled that the word “cupola” means small dome but that cupolone refers to the “great dome” of St. Peter’s basilica at the Vatican. Hope the mystery is solved!