Word.ws English Dictionary

ten-gallon hat

ten-gallon hat noun: a large cowboy hat, not holding ten gallons like the name would suggest but usually around three quarts.

Noun

ten-gallon hat (plural ten-gallon hats)

  1. A large cowboy hat, not holding ten gallons like the name would suggest but usually around three quarts.

Forms of ten-gallon hat

pluralten-gallon hats
alternative form10-gallon hat

Origin of ten-gallon hat

Not certain. An earlier form without the number, gallon hat, comes by folk etymology from the Spanish galón (“braid”). It may also be a hyperbolic reference to the size of the hat, or a combination of the two.

Questions about ten-gallon hat

What does ten-gallon hat mean?
Ten-gallon hat means a large cowboy hat, not holding ten gallons like the name would suggest but usually around three quarts.
What part of speech is ten-gallon hat?
Ten-gallon hat is a noun.
What is the plural of ten-gallon hat?
The plural of ten-gallon hat is ten-gallon hats.

Words near ten-gallon hat in the dictionary

  1. ten-footer
  2. ten-footers
  3. ten-for
  4. ten-fors
  5. ten-four
  6. ten-gallon hat
  7. ten-gallon hats
  8. ten-hut
  9. ten-in-one
  10. ten-in-ones
  11. ten-lined June beetle

Source and license

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