hat

AI In plain words

Writing a short explanation…

Written by a house AI from the entry below, in your language. The entry itself is the source.

hat^¹

/hæt/ Australia, US
/hat/ California, Canada, UK
/hæ̞ʔ/ Northwestern, US
/hɛt/ New Zealand, Northern US

Rhymes with -æt

Where it comes from

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}}.

noun 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.
Similar: cap
figuratively A particular role or capacity that a person might fill. It's all a matter of hats, Minister.
figuratively Any receptacle from which names or numbers are pulled out in a lottery.
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.
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 “ha
informal The caret symbol ^.
Internet User rights on a website, such as the right to edit pages others cannot.
obsolete 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.
Similar: gold hatband, tuft

verb hats · hatting · 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.
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.
intransitive To shop for hats. We might just go hatting this afternoon […]
transitive To collapse with a template a part of a discussion due to it being overly long, disruptive, or already addressed.

hat^²

/hæt/ Australia, US
/hat/ California, Canada, UK
/hæ̞ʔ/ Northwestern, US
/hɛt/ New Zealand, Northern US

Rhymes with -æt

verb

Northern England, Scotland, obsolete, past simple past of hit

HAT^³

noun 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.

Thesaurus

Closest in meaning: chapeau, lid, fedora, beret, sombrero, beanie, headdress, bonnet, cap, hood, headgear, headwear, helmet, jacket, hairstyle, hairdo

Translations

Every language

noun a role or capacity

Français	casquette

noun a head covering

Español	sombrero, sueste
한국어	모자 moja
日本語	帽子 bōshi
中文	帽子 màozi
हिन्दी	टोपी ṭopī, टोप ṭop
Kiswahili	kofia, chapeo
Português	chapéu
Français	chapeau, couvre-chef
Deutsch	Kopfbedeckung, Kappe, Hut, Mütze
Italiano	cappello
Ελληνικά	καπέλο kapélo, πίλος pílos
Română	pălărie
Русский	шля́па šljápa, ша́пка šápka, головно́й убо́р golovnój ubór
Tiếng Việt	mũ, nón
العربية	قُبَّعَة qubbaʕa, بُرْنَيْطَة burnayṭa, بِرْنِيطَة birnīṭa
עברית	כּוֹבַע kóva

Talk about this word

Cite this

MLA

"hat." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/hat. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

hat. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/hat

Chicago

"hat." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/hat.

BibTeX

@misc{hat_2026,
  title = {hat},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/hat},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}

hat