Word.ws English Dictionary

eat one's hat

eat one's hat verb: used to express absolute certainty that something will not happen or is untrue.

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!

Forms of eat one's hat

third-person singular presenteats one's hat
present participleeating one's hat
pastate one's hat
past participleeaten one's hat

Questions about eat one's hat

What does eat one's hat mean?
Eat one's hat means used to express absolute certainty that something will not happen or is untrue.
What part of speech is eat one's hat?
Eat one's hat is a verb.
What is the past tense of eat one's hat?
The past tense of eat one's hat is ate one's hat.

Words near eat one's hat in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-eat one's hat.ogg.

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