hat

/hat//hæt/

hat noun: a covering for the head, often in the approximate form of a cone, dome or cylinder closed at its top end, and sometimes having a brim and other decoration. Also the simple past of hit.

Image: Phoebe A. Jenks (American, 1847–1907), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

hat (plural hats)

A covering for the head, often in the approximate form of a cone, dome or cylinder closed at its top end, and sometimes having a brim and other decoration.
- There was a neat hat-and-umbrella stand, and the stranger's weary feet fell soft on a good, serviceable dark-red drugget, which matched in colour the flock-paper on the walls.1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter II, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans...
- Denzel walks. Will Smith walks. Mark Wahlberg is wearing a hat!2009, “Cool Guys Don’t Look at Explosions”performed by Andy Samberg, Will Ferrell, and J. J. Abrams
Synonyms:

cap
(figuratively) A particular role or capacity that a person might fill.
- It's all a matter of hats, Minister.1980 March 3, Antony Jay, Jonathan Lynn, “The Official Visit”, in Yes Minister, season 1, episode 1, spoken by Bernard Woolley (Derek Fowlds)
- My mother was wearing several hats in the early fifties: hostess, scout, wife, and mother.1993, Susan Loesser, A Most Remarkable Fella: Frank Loesser and the Guys and Dolls in His Life: A Portrait by His Daughter, Hal Leonard Corporation, published 2000, →ISBN, page 121
(figuratively) Any receptacle from which names or numbers are pulled out in a lottery.
1. (broadly, figuratively) The lottery or draw itself.
  - We're both in the hat: let's hope we come up against each other.
A hat switch.
- The third type of function allows you to check on the state of the joystick's buttons, axes, hats, and balls.2002, Ernest Pazera, Focus on SDL, page 139
The circumflex symbol.
(nonstandard, rare) The háček symbol.
- I’lll have to leave it up to antiques experts to tell you when objects were marked that way, but I can tell you it’s called a “hacek” (with the hat over the “c” and pronounced “hacheck”.) It is used to show that a “c” is pronounced as “ch” and an “s” as “sh.” Sometimes linguists just call it the...1997 October 6th, “Patricia V. Lehman” (user name), rec.antiques (Usenet newsgroup), “Re: Unusual Mark – made in Cechoslovakia”, Message ID: <34390399.BD7@umich.edu>#1/1
(informal) The caret symbol ^.
(Internet) User rights on a website, such as the right to edit pages others cannot.
(obsolete, Cambridge University slang) A student who is also the son of a nobleman (and so allowed to wear a hat instead of a mortarboard).
- I knew intimately all the 'Hats' in the University, and I was henceforth looked up to by the 'Caps,' as if my head had gained the height of every hat that I knew.1830, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, chapter 32, in Paul Clifford
Synonyms:

gold hatband, tuft

Verb

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

(transitive) To place a hat on.
- After the maids had hatted and gloved the girls, the carriage was summoned and I was carted around one church after another.2004, David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas, London: Sceptre (Hodder and Stoughton), →ISBN
(transitive) To appoint as cardinal.
- It was truly a breathtaking rise. From the quiet school, Pope Pius XI had jumped Father Verdier over the heads of innumerable Bishops, made him Archbishop of Paris. Soon he was to be hatted a Prince of the Church and put in charge of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame.1929 December 2, “Five New Hats”, in Time
(intransitive) To shop for hats.
- We might just go hatting this afternoon […]1920, Katharine Metcalf Roof, The Great Demonstration, page 122
- Watt's need of semantic succour was at times so great that he would set to trying names on things, and on himself, almost as a woman hats.1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC
(transitive) To collapse with a template a part of a discussion due to it being overly long, disruptive, or already addressed.

Noun (2) capitalized: HAT

HAT (plural HATs)

(abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of highest astronomical tide.
(abbreviation, initialism, uncountable) Initialism of human African trypanosomiasis.
(abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of hardware attached on top: a kind of expansion board for the Raspberry Pi computer.

Also used as

hat is also the simple past of hit.

hat meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

hat in Hindi

a head covering: टोपी ṭopī, टोप ṭop

hat in Tamil

a head covering: தொப்பி toppi, குல்லா kullā

hat in Marathi

a head covering: टोपी ṭopī, टोप ṭop

hat in Urdu

a head covering: ٹوپی ṭopī, ٹوپ ṭop

More languagesFewer languages

hat in Bengali: টুপি ṭupi
hat in Telugu: టోపి ṭōpi
hat in Malayalam: തൊപ്പി toppi
hat in Kannada: ಟೋಪಿ ṭōpi
hat in Punjabi: ਟੋਪੀ ṭopī, ٹوپی ṭopī
hat in Gujarati: ટોપી ṭopī
hat in Odia: ଟୋପୀ ṭopi
hat in Sinhala: තොප්පිය toppiya
hat in Assamese: টুপী tupi
hat in Nepali: टोपी, टुपी, टोपि
hat in Pashto: ټوپۍ ṭopᶕy, خولۍ xwalᶕy, پټاخه paṭãxa
hat in Tagalog: sumbrero, sambalilo
hat in Arabic: قُبَّعَة qubbaʕa, بُرْنَيْطَة burnayṭa, بِرْنِيطَة birnīṭa, قُبَّعة gubbaʕa , qubbaʕa
hat in Malay: topi
hat in Indonesian: topi
hat in Persian: کُلَاه kulāh, کُلاه kolâh
hat in Thai: หัวโขน hǔua-kǒon, หมวก mùuak
hat in Vietnamese: mũ, nón
hat in Myanmar: ဦးထုပ် u:htup
Dhivehi: ތޮފި tofi
Kashmiri: ٹوٗپؠ ṭūp'
Dzongkha: ཞྭམོ། zhwamo

Examples of hat in a sentence

Everyone pick a token (hat, wheelbarrow, thimble, etc.) and place it on the Start square.
So I put my hand into the hat and presto! Out comes a rabbit!
The Queen was seen wearing a hat when she visited Ascot, natch.

All 40 example sentences with hat

Synonyms of hat

Forms of hat

Noun
plural	hats
plural	HATs
Verb
third-person singular present	hats
present participle	hatting
past participle	hatted
past	hatted

Plural of hat: hats

Origin of hat

From Middle English hat, from Old English hætt, from Proto-Germanic *hattuz (“hat”), perhaps from a late PIE root Proto-Indo-European *kedʰ- (“to guard, cover, care for, protect”) or wanderwort. Cognate with North Frisian and Danish hat (“hat”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish hatt (“hat”), Icelandic hattur (“hat”), Finnish hattu (“hat”), Latin cassis (“helmet”), Lithuanian kudas (“bird's crest or tuft”), Avestan 𐬑𐬀𐬊𐬛𐬀 (xaoda, “hat”), Persian خود (xud, “helmet”), Welsh cadw (“to provide for, ensure”). Compare also hood. Verb sense 4 derives from a common English Wikipedia template used to collapse disruptive discussions, {{Hidden archive top}}, abbreviated as {{hat}}.

Words formed from hat

Phrases with hat

144 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with hat

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about hat

What does hat mean?: Hat means a covering for the head, often in the approximate form of a cone, dome or cylinder closed at its top end, and sometimes having a brim and other decoration.
What is hat in Hindi?: Hat in Hindi is टोपी (ṭopī), टोप (ṭop). See Hat meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is hat?: Hat can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce hat?: Hat is pronounced /hæt/ (US).
What is the plural of hat?: The plural of hat is hats.

Words near hat in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: hat (page history and authors); HAT (page history and authors); hat (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-hat.ogg, en-uk-hat.ogg.

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