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 (idiomatic) Very familiar; common, hackneyed or out of date.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) (slang, now rare, archaic)

1. The vulva.
   • 1980, Erica Jong, Fanny:

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

2. (by extension) Sexual intercourse.
   • 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 […]

Synonyms

• (vulva): coochie, ladybits, quim; see also Thesaurus:vulva
• (sexual intercourse): coitus, horizontal mambo, rumpy-pumpy; see also Thesaurus:copulation

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.