old hat

English

Etymology

Origin unknown. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests a connection to German alter Hut (noun, literally “old hat”).

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Adjective

old hat (comparative more old hat, superlative most old hat)

1. (idiomatic) Very familiar; common, hackneyed or out of date. [from 20th c.]

   Synonyms: banal, commonplace, cliché, démodé, passé, unchic; see also Thesaurus:unfashionable

   • 1946 November 11, “New Plays in Manhattan”, in Time‎^[1], archived from the original on 15 May 2009:

     Coward is such an old hand at this kind of thing that he makes it seem old hat.

   • 1964 July, “The mythology of monorails”, in Modern Railways, page 1:

     In fact, monorails are rather old hat.

   • 1987 May 8, Elaine Sciolino, “Washington Talk: The Hart Story Grips the Capital”, in New York Times‎^[2]:

     It is old hat for a sex scandal to bring down a politician.

   • 2007 May 4, Fredrick Kunkle, Paul Duggan, “Straining for a Glimpse of Royalty”, in Washington Post‎^[3]:

     Based on the size of the crowd, perhaps the queen is old hat.

   • 2021 September 6, Zack Handlen, “Rick And Morty ends its fifth season looking for an escape hatch”, in AV Club‎^[4]:

     The only real knock against “Mortshall” is that “Rick and Morty get sick of each other and split up for a while” feels kind of old hat at this point—the comic premise of the show requires their relationship to be toxic (because a lot of the humor comes from seeing Rick be a shit and seeing Morty try haplessly to deal with Rick being a shit), and they can only try and sell the illusion that anything is going to change so many times before it starts to get stale.

Alternative forms

• old-hat

Noun

old hat (countable and uncountable, plural old hats)

1. Any information or knowledge that knowledgeable persons have down pat (where such persons may be initiates in an area of expertise or, sometimes, anyone with half a brain).

   Hyponyms: old news, yesterday's news

2. (slang, now rare, archaic) The vulva.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:vulva

   • 1980, Erica Jong, Fanny:

     'Tis a Nest, a Niche, an Old Hat, an Omnibus, an Oyster, a Palace o' Pleasure.

3. (slang, now rare, archaic) (by extension) Sexual intercourse.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:copulation

   • 1723, Charles Walker, Memoirs of Sally Salisbury, letter XI:

     Upon which she very pertly reply'd, She had done that not with a Design to affront but to convince me of the Value she had for my Present; for that if the Pedantick Blockhead should come, he should only have a little bit of Old-Hat to stay his Stomach, till he got to some Harlot of his own Puritanical Flock […]

Translations

something very familiar

• Finnish: peruskaura
• German: kalter Kaffee m

vulva

• Finnish: reva (fi)

References

• “old hat”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.