Word.ws English Dictionary

hang up one's hat

hang up one's hat verb: to end one's career.

Verb

hang up one's hat (third-person singular simple present hangs up one's hat, present participle hanging up one's hat, simple past and past participle hung up one's hat)

  1. (idiomatic) To end one's career.
    • The film even picks up with his colleagues at the university throwing him a retirement party, but it never explores how Indy feels about finally hanging up his hat as a professor.2023 June 28, Lauren Coates, “Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny review: Harrison Ford goes to the whip”, in AV Club
  2. (idiomatic) To make oneself at home in someone's house.
  3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see hang, hat.

Forms of hang up one's hat

third-person singular presenthangs up one's hat
present participlehanging up one's hat
past participlehung up one's hat
pasthung up one's hat

Questions about hang up one's hat

What does hang up one's hat mean?
Hang up one's hat means to end one's career.
What part of speech is hang up one's hat?
Hang up one's hat is a verb.
What is the past tense of hang up one's hat?
The past tense of hang up one's hat is hung up one's hat.

Words near hang up one's hat in the dictionary

  1. hang together
  2. hang tough
  3. hang up
  4. hang up one's boots
  5. hang up one's fiddle
  6. hang up one's hat
  7. hang up one's spurs
  8. hang up the boots
  9. hang upon
  10. hang with
  11. hang'd

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hang up 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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