Word.ws English Dictionary

wear too many hats

wear too many hats verb: to try to fill more roles at once than is realistically possible.

Verb

wear too many hats (third-person singular simple present wears too many hats, present participle wearing too many hats, simple past wore too many hats, past participle worn too many hats)

  1. (idiomatic) To try to fill more roles at once than is realistically possible.
    • She is asked to be a comedienne, dancer, stunt woman, singer and dramatic actress — and the truth is that she is trying to wear too many hats.1963 August 10, Cameron Dewar, “Too Many Hats for 'Jennie'”, in Billboard

Forms of wear too many hats

third-person singular presentwears too many hats
present participlewearing too many hats
pastwore too many hats
past participleworn too many hats

Questions about wear too many hats

What does wear too many hats mean?
Wear too many hats means to try to fill more roles at once than is realistically possible.
What part of speech is wear too many hats?
Wear too many hats is a verb.
What is the past tense of wear too many hats?
The past tense of wear too many hats is wore too many hats.

Words near wear too many hats in the dictionary

  1. wear the breeches
  2. wear the pants
  3. wear the trousers
  4. wear thin
  5. wear through
  6. wear too many hats
  7. wear two hats
  8. wear up
  9. wear weary
  10. wear yellow stockings
  11. wearabilities

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wear too many hats (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-wear too many hats.ogg.

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