sunbonnet

English

Old woman in sunbonnet by Doris Ulmann

Etymology

sun +‎ bonnet

Noun

sunbonnet (plural sunbonnets)

1. A hat (bonnet) worn for protection from bright sunlight.
   • 1923, Lucy Maud Montgomery, “Chapter 8”, in Emily of New Moon:

     “Put on your sunbonnet,” she ordered.
     “Oh, please, Aunt Elizabeth, don’t make me wear that horrid thing.”
     Aunt Elizabeth, wasting no further words, picked up the bonnet and tied it on Emily’s head. Emily had to yield. But from the depths of the sunbonnet issued a voice, defiant though tremulous.

   • 1929, M. Barnard Eldershaw, A House Is Built, Chapter VII, Section xi:

     She saw a square picture framed in the window, two whitewashed cottages each with a little winding path, a bed of red and yellow cockscomb, a sloping field, a row of gum-trees, a child in a blue sunbonnet carrying a basket.

2. A plant of the genera Leibnitzia or Chaptalia, native to Asia and the Americas.

Alternative forms

• sun bonnet (hat)

Derived terms

• sunbonneted, sun-bonneted

Translations

type of bonnet

• Afrikaans: kappie
• Finnish: hilkka (fi)
• Irish: boinéad gréine m

Anagrams

• unbonnets