hat trick

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See also: hattrick, hat-trick, and Hattrick

English

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WOTD – 10 August 2024

Etymology

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From hat +‎ trick (“element of a magician’s or variety entertainer’s act; entertaining and difficult physical action”, noun).[1] Sense 2 (“achievement of a bowler taking three wickets in three consecutive balls”)—the original sporting sense—refers to the commemorative hat formerly given as a prize to the bowler by his club.[1]

Pronunciation

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Noun

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hat trick (plural hat tricks)

  1. Any magic trick performed with a hat, especially one involving pulling an object (traditionally a rabbit) out of an apparently empty hat.
  3. (cricket) An achievement of a bowler taking three wickets in three consecutive balls.
    1. (by extension, sports) Three achievements in a single game, competition, season, etc., such as three consecutive wins.
      Coordinate term: brace
      Ever heard of a Gordie Howe hat trick? It comprises a goal, an assist, and a fighting major penalty.
      1. (specifically, baseball, ironic) The act of striking out three times in a game.
        Jones got a hat trick yesterday. Let’s see if he can do better today.
      2. (specifically, ice hockey, soccer) Three goals scored by one player in a game.
        In ice hockey, it’s customary for fans to throw their hats on to the rink after a player scores a hat trick.
      3. (specifically, rugby) Three tries scored by one player in a game.
    2. (by extension, generally) Three achievements or incidents that occur together, usually within a certain period of time.
      The car salesman came home with front-row seats to the weekend game after achieving a hat trick by selling three cars that day.
      • 2002, Douglas Heil, “From Office Temp to ‘Hat Trick’ Showrunner: Interview with Joseph Dougherty”, in Prime Time Authorship: Works about and by Three TV Dramatists (The Television Series), Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, →ISBN, page 129:
        And with the debut of his new series Hyperion Bay in 1998, [Joseph] Dougherty accomplished the rare "hat trick" in television: the pilot was written, executive-produced, and codirected by Dougherty.
      • 2015, Les Roberts, “Milan”, in The Ashtabula Hat Trick (A Milan Jacovich/Kevin O’Bannion Mystery), Cleveland, Oh.: Gray & Company, →ISBN, page 51:
        Three murders in less than two weeks. That's a hat trick.
      • 2017 May, Laura Spinney, “Chalking Doors with Crosses”, in Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: PublicAffairs, published September 2017, →ISBN, part 4 (The Survival Instinct), page 91:
        In these modern cities, anti-infection measures had to be imposed from the top down, by a central authority. To pull this off, the authority required three things: the ability to identify cases in a timely fashion, and so determine the infection's direction of travel; an understanding of how the disease spread (by water? air? insect vector?), and hence the measures that were likely to block it; and some means of ensuring compliance with those measures. When all three of these ingredients – which we'll describe in more detail in the following sections – were in place, containment could be extremely effective, but a hat-trick was rare.
  4. (UK politics, historical, rare) A means of securing a seat in the House of Commons by a Member of Parliament placing their hat upon it during an absence.

Alternative forms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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References

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  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 “hat-trick, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, July 2023; “hat-trick, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

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