Winter brings the need to bundle up against the cold. Part of that process is donning a hat.
Hat History
Head coverings were invented for more than just protecting the wearer’s head. A hat can also indicate a person’s job, as well as their social status. They can be used for ceremonial or religious reasons, or simply as a fashion accessory. No one knows exactly when and where the first hat originated, but one of the earliest pictures of one is in a tomb painting from 3200 BCE in Thebes, Egypt.
Over the centuries, hats and their purposes have both changed. In ancient times, a person’s prowess, honor, or power was rewarded by distinct headgear. At the ancient Olympic games, the winners received an olive wreath. While a helmet, rather than a crown, empowered the earliest English king more than a thousand years ago.
Did You Know…
- A man from 3250 BCE, found frozen in a mountain between Austria and Italy, wore a bearskin cap with a hide chin strap.
- Slaves in ancient Rome weren’t allowed to cover their heads. So, putting on a hat was one of the first things a newly freed slave did. (This “liberty cap” became a symbol of freedom during both the American and French Revolutions.)
- Medieval theologian, John Duns Scots, created the tall and pointy “dunce” hat. He believed the conical shape funneled knowledge from God into the head of a dunce.
- Between 1784-1811, England had a hat tax. Buyers paid this tax on top of the hat’s cost. A hat seller also had to have a license to sell hats.
- A coonskin cap is associated with both Canadian and American frontiersmen of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
- The bowler hat was created to protect gamekeepers in the case a poacher bashed them on the head.
- Baseball umpires in the mid nineteenth-century wore top hats during the game.
Hat-isms
Many common phrases have developed from hats. Here are a few of the more well-known.
Eat Your Hat. This hat-ism dates to at least the reign of Charles II (King of England, Ireland, and Scotland from 1660-1685). It refers to something that is believed to be a sure thing.
Hat in Hand. This hat-ism is assumed to come from feudal times when lower members of society had to remove their hats when in the presence of a monarch or lord. It demonstrated humility.
Throwing Your Hat in the Ring. According to William F. Buckley, Jr., nineteenth-century saloon keepers put a boxing ring in the middle of the barroom. A man ready to fight would throw his hat in the ring. Today this hat-ism means a person is entering a contest or race.
Wearing Many Hats. In the past, different occupations called for different types of hats. So saying a person wears many hats is a hat-ism for someone with many jobs or duties.
All Hat and No Cattle. This hat-ism is a Texas expression that refers to men who looked like cattlemen but weren’t because they didn’t have any cattle. In other words, they are all show and no substance.
Other hat-isms you may have heard include: Hats Off, A Feather in Your Cap, Hold on to Your Hat(s), Bee in Your Bonnet, Old Hat, Mad as a Hatter, Hat Trick, Hard Hats, Pass the Hat, Tight as Dick’s Hat Band, Tip of the Hat, Setting Her Cap, Thinking Cap, Black Hat, White Hat, At the Drop of a Hat, and Keeping Something Under One’s Hat.
The End
In the 1960s, hairstyles became more important than hats. Though interest in hats has increased thanks to both the current and late Princesses of Wales, today’s style of dressing, in most cases, is too casual for anything more than a baseball cap.
Did You Know…
- The term “milliner”—someone who makes ladies hats—was first used in the sixteenth century and referred to Milan, Italy, where the best hats were made.
- A chef’s tall, white hat is called a “toque.” It’s supposed to have one hundred pleats, representing all the ways to cook an egg.
- Black taxis in London have high roofs so a gentleman could get in without taking off his top hat.
- Panama hats came from Ecuador, not Panama.
- It’s illegal to wear a hat while dancing in Fargo, North Dakota. Actually, it’s illegal to wear a hat in Fargo anywhere there may be dancing.
- The Kentucky Derby still requires attendees to wear fancy hats.
- The world’s tallest hat is 15.75 feet. That’s a Guinness World Record. The hat-maker, from Tampa, Florida, had to walk nearly 33 feet wearing the hat to get the record.
- In 1814, Frenchman Louis Comte was the first magician to pull a rabbit out of a top hat.
- Indiana Jones’ Fedora hat is kept at George Lucas’ 156-acre Skywalker Ranch in Marin County California. The ranch library is where he did all the research on the plot, wardrobe, and design for Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- A ten-gallon hat only holds three quarts or three-fourths of a gallon. The “gallon” comes from the Spanish word for braid.