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PlainSpell

hat

/hæt/noun, verb

hat is spelled H-A-T: 3 letters and one syllable. It appears 34 times per million words in written English, the 2,831st most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, hat means “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…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of hat is hats.

How many letters and syllables are in hat?

Letters3: H-A-T
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing34 times per million words; the 2,831st most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search
Rhymes with
Same letters

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How common is hat?

Hat appears 34 times per million words in written English, the 2,831st most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce hat?

  • US /hæt/
  • UK /hat/
  • US /hæ̞ʔ/

Hat has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-hat.ogg, En-uk-hat.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

What rhymes with hat?

The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as hat from its last stressed vowel (/æt/):

Spelled with the same letters in another order: tha.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of hat

  • hats plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • hatting participle, present
  • hatted participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does hat mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 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.

  2. 2

    A particular role or capacity that a person might fill.

  3. 3

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

  4. 4

    The lottery or draw itself.

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

  5. 5

    A hat switch.

  6. 6

    The circumflex symbol.

  7. 7

    nonstandardrareThe 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”

  8. 8

    informalThe caret symbol ^.

verb

  1. 1

    To place a hat on.

  2. 2

    To appoint as cardinal.

  3. 3

    To shop for hats.

  4. 4

    To collapse with a template a part of a discussion due to it being overly long, disruptive, or already addressed.

noun

as HAT
  1. 1

    Initialism of highest astronomical tide.

  2. 2

    Initialism of human African trypanosomiasis.

  3. 3

    Initialism of hardware attached on top: a kind of expansion board for the Raspberry Pi computer.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Hat in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchchapeau, couvre-chef (a head covering), casquette (a role or capacity)
GermanKopfbedeckung, Kappe, Hut, Mütze, Huet (a head covering)
Portuguesechapéu (a head covering)
Spanishsombrero, sueste (a head covering)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does hat come 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.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after hat