hat

noun

Etymology: 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.

1. 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.”

   “Denzel walks. Will Smith walks. Mark Wahlberg is wearing a hat!”

2. A particular role or capacity that a person might fill.

   “It's all a matter of hats, Minister.”

   “My mother was wearing several hats in the early fifties: hostess, scout, wife, and mother.”

3. Any receptacle from which names or numbers are pulled out in a lottery.
4. Any receptacle from which names or numbers are pulled out in a lottery.

   “We're both in the hat: let's hope we come up against each other.”

5. A hat switch.

   “The third type of function allows you to check on the state of the joystick's buttons, axes, hats, and balls.”

6. The circumflex symbol.
7. 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 “hat.””

8. The caret symbol ^.
9. User rights on a website, such as the right to edit pages others cannot.
10. 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.”

verb

1. simple past of hit