Meaning & use
cavalier hat
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Meanings
nouncountable
A soft hat with a wide, floppy brim and usually a feather, worn by Royalist gentlemen in seventeenth-century England.
Grammar: Plural is cavalier hats. Usually discussed in historical or costume contexts.
Patterns
- a cavalier hat with something
The portrait showed a man in a cavalier hat with a long white feather.
The museum displayed a cavalier hat from the English Civil War.
He wore a cavalier hat and a velvet cloak to the historical re-enactment.
nouncountable
A hat of this wide-brimmed, plumed style, used today in costumes and theater.
Grammar: Often connected to musketeers and swashbucklers in stories and films.
Every actor playing a musketeer wore a cavalier hat on stage.
I borrowed a cavalier hat for the costume party.
She decorated the cavalier hat with a bright red plume.
Word forms
| plural | cavalier hats |
|---|
Common combinations
- feathered cavalier hat
- He tipped his feathered cavalier hat to the audience.
- wide-brimmed cavalier hat
- A wide-brimmed cavalier hat shaded his face.
- plumed cavalier hat
- The plumed cavalier hat made him look like a hero from a novel.
- wear a cavalier hat
- The guide wears a cavalier hat during the castle tour.
- cavalier hat and boots
- With a cavalier hat and boots, the costume was complete.
Synonyms and how they differ
- plumed hat
- Plumed hat is a general description for any hat with a feather, while cavalier hat names a specific historical style.
- musketeer hat
- Musketeer hat is the popular costume name, linked to French swashbuckler stories rather than English history.
- slouch hat
- A slouch hat has a floppy brim but is usually plain and practical, while a cavalier hat is decorated.
Word family
Commonly confused: cavalier hat or cavalier?
cavalier hat vs cavalier
As an adjective, cavalier means careless or dismissive, as in a cavalier attitude, and has nothing to do with hats.
Practice
Which kind of hat, often with a long feather, is linked to Royalists in seventeenth-century England?
Choose one answer.
The cavalier hat is the wide-brimmed, feathered hat of Royalist gentlemen. A bowler is round and stiff, a top hat is tall, and a beret is soft and flat.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “cavalier hat”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.