Word.ws English Dictionary

bowler hat out

bowler hat out verb: to eject (someone) from an organization.

Verb

bowler hat out (third-person singular simple present bowler hats out, present participle bowler hatting out, simple past and past participle bowler hatted out)

  1. (UK, dated, slang, usually passive voice) To eject (someone) from an organization.
    • Joe was bowler hatted out of the R.A.F. for misconduct.
    • "Bit of luck my being here," said the brigadier, with a smile, rather like a schoolboy who has done something and got away with it. "You see, I was bowler-hatted out there. Question of age. Then, when I came back they reconsidered things.1946, Richard McMillan, Miracle Before Berlin

Forms of bowler hat out

third-person singular presentbowler hats out
present participlebowler hatting out
past participlebowler hatted out
pastbowler hatted out
alternative formbowler-hat out

Origin of bowler hat out

Reputed to be from the practice of turning Royal Air Force men out by giving them their bowler hat and telling them to go.

Questions about bowler hat out

What does bowler hat out mean?
Bowler hat out means to eject (someone) from an organization.
What part of speech is bowler hat out?
Bowler hat out is a verb.
What is the past tense of bowler hat out?
The past tense of bowler hat out is bowler hatted out.

Words near bowler hat out in the dictionary

  1. bowlegs
  2. Bowlen
  3. Bowlens
  4. bowler
  5. bowler hat
  6. bowler hat out
  7. bowler hats
  8. bowler hats out
  9. bowler hatted
  10. bowler hatted out
  11. bowler hatting

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bowler hat out (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.

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Cite this entry: “bowler hat out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bowler_hat_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.