Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1956 (said to have been designed c.1948), from Capri, Italian island; so called perhaps because they were first popular in Capri, which was emerging as a European holiday destination about this time (compare Bermuda shorts).
Wiktionary
n. Casual pants or trousers, usually for women, with the bottom hem reaching to below the knee but above the ankle; usually lightweight and summery.
Wikipedia
Capri pants (also known as Three quarter pants, capris, crop pants, pedal pushers, clam-diggers, flood pants, jams, highwaters, culottes, or toreador pants) are pants that are longer than shorts but are not as long as trousers. They typically come down to between knee and calf or ankle length. Capris are widely popular with people in many countries; especially in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Asia.
Usage examples of "capri pants".
When Mother steps foot out of the house in her black Capri pants, why, they all just gawk and stare.
Then, after pulling on a pair of capri pants, she went into the kitchen and turned on the radio.
Between her black capri pants and her little white socks and red canvas shoes, her calf muscles are smooth and white with everything of her that used to be red turned blue, her lips, her cuticles, the rim of each eye.
White capri pants and a tight white boat-neck shirt, and his father and she had fought for the last time in the hot car outside of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.
There was a divided skirt that would be knee-length on a small child, something called 'capri pants,' and jeans.
The culottes were lavender, the capri pants were yellow and white checked gingham printed with daisies, and the jeans were embroidered.
He was wearing his Obi-Wan Kenobi T-shirt, and Benedicte, dressed in a grey cord shirt of Hal's, capri pants and deck shoes, was opening a can of mandarins in syrup.
She looked so pretty in her wrinkled khaki capri pants, her pink T-shirt, and little white sneakers.
As it makes its way through the crowd, a woman wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and Capri pants bangs her hand against the passenger windows.
She opened the door, shivering in a halter top, capri pants, and no shoes, and to Joanna she looked even thinner and more drawn, or was that only because now she knew?
She was dressed in lightweight cotton capri pants and a matching blouse, her long black hair coming to her mid-back.
Her capri pants, her white cotton short-shorts, her two-piece polka dot swimsuit, her fuzzy sweaters.
Piper was wearing a sensible V-necked top and jeans, Paige had on a pair of trendy silver nylon track pants and a bright red T-shirt, and Phoebe was wearing a belly-bearing tank top under her cardigan, along with a pair of brightly flowered capri pants.
Shed narrowly missed becoming the youngest Keeper to ever hold such a position and shuddered at the sudden vision of herself at ninety-two in stretch capri pants and wedges, scarlet lips and crimson fingernails, badly dyed hair poofed out over way too much purple eye shadow, a cross between Nancy Reagan and Miss Piggy.
Bennett slugged her in the chest and tore off her Capri pants, blouse and underpants.