chef

Where it comes from

Chef ordinarily means a professional cook, especially the person directing a kitchen. Chef and chief trace to French chef or its older form chief, meaning head or leader, ultimately from Latin caput, head. English took chief in the Middle Ages, while the later culinary borrowing chef was clipped from chef de cuisine, literally the head of the kitchen. The two English forms preserve different moments in the same French word's history.

How the meaning developed

Chief kept the broad idea of leadership; chef narrowed to the person directing a kitchen and later widened within English culinary usage.