Word.ws English Dictionary

ate one's hat

ate one's hat is the simple past of eat one's hat.

Meaning of eat one's hat

Verb

eat one's hat (third-person singular simple present eats one's hat, present participle eating one's hat, simple past ate one's hat, past participle eaten one's hat)

  1. (idiomatic) Used to express absolute certainty that something will not happen or is untrue.
    • He said he would eat his hat if more than ten people came. He'd better fetch a knife and fork!

Questions about ate one's hat

What is ate one's hat the simple past of?
Ate one's hat is the simple past of eat one's hat.

Words near ate one's hat in the dictionary

  1. ate one's dinners
  2. ate one's emotions
  3. ate one's feelings
  4. ate one's fill
  5. ate one's gun
  6. ate one's hat
  7. ate one's head off
  8. ate one's heart
  9. ate one's heart out
  10. ate one's own
  11. ate one's own dog food

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ate one's hat (page history and authors); eat one's hat (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “ate one's hat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ate_one%27s_hat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.