Dictionary

shovel hat en · NOUN

Etymology

From the shape. Apparently originally "fire shovel hat" or "fire-shovel-hat" based on a fire shovel.

Meanings

1. (informal) A broad-brimmed style of hat, varying widely in detail, generally turned up at the sides and projecting in front like a shovel, formerly worn by some clergy.
   • At one period, our ministers, were distinguished and held in contempt for their Puritanism and Methodism; but now they excite risibility, by the use of the "fire shovel hat". 1816, The NEW EVANGELICAL MAGAZINE AND Theological Review
   • I soon learned that the fat, well-fed , and well dressed persons, with large shovel hats, were priests […] . 1825, Lionel Lexicographer, An Improved Roman Catholic Dictionary and Expositor of the Popish Religion and Policy
   • [O]ne is bound to speak the truth as far as one knows it, whether one mounts a cap and bells or a shovel hat; and a deal of disagreeable matter must come out in the course of such an undertaking. 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 8, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:
   • They touched their caps to the curé, who removed his shovel hat and bowed low, without, however, withdrawing his eyes from the book. 1870, Sabine Baring-Gould, In Exitu Israel
   • The good bishop of Cloyne took the veil of the temple out of his shovel hat […]. 1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 3: Proteus]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part I [Telemachia], page 48:
   • Then came a picture of a cheerful and corpulent ecclesiastic in a shovel hat, sitting opposite a very thin European, and the inscription: "Lunch with Fra Cristofero at Rosario". 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
2. (colloquial, obsolete) During the period of the popularity of shovel hats as clerical hats: any ecclesiastic, particularly one in traditional garb.
   • The enmity, which, in your Political Register, you have, for years, shewn to the "Fire-shovel Hats", or to the Clergy of the Church established by law, in particular, and to Dissenters from that Church, in general, in whatever state of mind it might have left you, has, I believe, not failed to persuade your readers, that, you are much about the same sort of Christian as I am. 1825, Richard Carlile, ‘To Mr William Cobbett’, The Republican, No. 2, VoL. II, Jan. 14, p. 33
   • I expected that the fire-shovel hats would get it in that Number; and they have got it, and laid on with a heavy hand! 1822, William Cobbett, Cobbett's Weekly Political Register, August 10, p. 367
   • For he misses his parsons, his dear shovel hats, who used to flock round him at Swanage like rooks. 1828, A Late Scene at Swanage

Forms