tin hat (plural tin hats)
- (military, slang, historical) The steel helmet worn by soldiers during World War I. [from 1915]
- Synonym: trench derby (slang)
2007, Winston Groom, 1942: The Year That Tried Men's Souls:They could live on jerked goat, the strong black coffee they called 'boiler compound,' and hash cooked in a tin hat.
- A tinfoil hat.
2011, Andrew Curtiss, 1984 Redux: Say Hello to Big Brother, page 491:The New World Order is a term that has often been laughed at, ridiculed and considered as paranoia by tin hat wearing conspiracy theorists in recent history.
2011, Carol Ann Lindsay, The Planet Of Comet Sense, page 102:Meanwhile we're all being led like sheep to the slaughter while being portrayed by the industry that would commit genocide as a fringe group of misguided, uninformed, conspiracy theorist, tin hat lunatics that also believe in alien abductions.
2018, Alex Oates, “Rules for Being a Man”, in Silk Road (How to Buy Drugs Online) and Rules for Being a Man[1], Bloomsbury, page 38:I don’t look like a conspiracy theorist. No tin hat, right?