Hats on Top
N J Ravi Chander
There are expressions galore about hats. Some people can write stories and articles ‘at the drop of a hat’ and I ‘take my hat off to them’. Should this piece be published, it would be “a feather in my cap”, and I would probably utter, “My hat!” in astonishment. If it isn’t, I may have to ‘pass the hat around’. If I wanted to run for office or accept a challenge, I would ‘toss my hat into the ring’, and if I confided in you, I would ask you to keep it ‘under your hat’.
“Which hat are you wearing now?” may be a question addressed to a person, holding more than one office, who is publicly airing views. One smart Alec quipped, “I can wear a hat or take it off, but either way, it’s a conversation piece”. One of the earliest pictorial depictions of a hat – circa 3200 BC – appears in a tomb painting from Thebes, which shows a man wearing a conical straw hat.
Several upper-class Egyptians shaved their heads, then covered them in a headdress intended to help them keep cool. Today, “Hard Hats” refers to protective hats worn by construction workers. But in the 19th century, the phrase implied men who wore derby hats and later used for referring to crooks, gamblers and detectives.
In the 1400s, when the world discovered a method for making felt, hat-making became an industry. Until the industrial revolution, mercury was used in the felt making process, and hatters, frequently exposed to the toxic substance, absorbed it into the system, poisoning the body.
The first symptoms were “the shakes”, which was soon followed by mental aberrations. Hence, the term “mad as a hatter”. Designers of women’s hats are called milliners, but have you ever heard the expression “mad as a milliner”? In Australia, “Hatter” refers to a lone dweller in the outback.
A player gets a hat-trick when they score three goals in one game, but the term’s use didn’t start on the football pitch. Instead, the phrase came from cricket and referred to a bowler who scalped three wickets from three consecutive deliveries.
A young man might set his cap at a woman, who might consider his approach ‘old hat’, and if he had a terrible reputation, he would be a ‘bad hat’. The phrase ‘bee in your bonnet’ is an indication or an idea that you can’t let go of and have to express – A real bee in one’s bonnet indeed precipitates expression – and to put on your “thinking cap” is to give some problem careful thought.
One may cock one’s hat or wear it on the side of the head animatedly to appear knowing or pert. If a husband arrived home late, he might throw his hat in the door to test the reaction, just as a cowboy in the old westerns would expose his hat on a stick to draw rifle fire.
Criticism, not intentionally directed at you, may hurt or offend you, but if the cap fits, wear it. On the other hand, it doesn’t always pay to “talk through your hat’ and the consequences could be rather unpleasant or even harmful to health if one were to assert: “If it isn’t so, I’ll eat my hat”.
Have you heard of the term “hat in hand”, meaning in a humble or subordinate manner, abjectly? I want to cap it all with some witty remark, but I have no more rabbits to pull out of the hat.
(The author is a former banker who has taken to writing as a past time. He is a regular contributor to Kashmir Vision)
