I’ll Eat My Hat!

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Yes, hello. Jamie from San Diego. How are you? I’m doing well, Jamie. You’re from San Diego, like us? Yes, I am. Yes, my mother was from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, born in 1922, you know, part of the greatest generation. And she had a lot of kind of unusual expressions that I don’t normally hear.

Now, I don’t know if you are from that part of the country originally. You may recognize some of them if you’re, you know, come and if you’ve come to San Diego a little later. She had a lot of colorful expressions. And one of them was, oh, I’ll eat my hat. So for example, if this cake, you know, was made from scratch, I’ll eat my hat. And I don’t even know where made from scratch came from. I mean, that’s probably something you’ve covered in a former episode. But yeah, she would say whenever something was sort of dubious, she would say, well, if that’s the way, you know, that is, I’ll eat my hat because it just indicated she didn’t believe it.

Right.

I’ll eat my hat actually isn’t regional. It’s not particularly American. It’s just kind of standard English. It’s idiomatic. It goes back about, oh, 300 years, maybe more. and And it literally is exactly how you phrased it, which is it’s a thing that you’ll say because you think that you’ll never have to do it because you’re so certain that you’re right.

Maybe you might say in the old days, you might say, I’ll eat my boots or I’ll eat my cap or I’ll eat my bonnet. Or in the more extended version, I’ll eat my hat, then swallow my boots.

But basically, I am so positive I am correct. I swear I’ll do this ridiculous thing if I’m wrong.

Gosh, that goes a lot further if you’re even going to eat your boots.

I never heard that one.

It sure does.

But we have a lot of these things that we say in English, if we’re pretty sure that we’re right.

Like we talk about eating humble pie or eating crow or eating our own words.

And, you know, in other European languages, they also talk about eating their hat.

So it’s not even just English and French and Dutch, Italian, and the Scandinavian languages and in Russian.

It’s literally the same exact thing, only in their own languages.

I’ll eat my hat.

But in German, guess what they say?

They say, I’ll eat my broom.

Not I’ll eat it.

Jamie, they say, I’ll devour my broom or devour a broom.

Oh, that’s even less appetizing.

And traditional Chinese, they’ll say, if I’m wrong, I’ll give you my head.

Oh, my goodness.

You know, eating your hat doesn’t sound so bad after all.

Oh, my goodness. I appreciate your knowledge.

That’s so interesting to hear a bigger expression of where it’s all from, where it all originated.

We appreciate your calling, Jamie.

Yeah, take care of yourself. Don’t eat no brooms.

I sure won’t be doing that.

Bye-bye.

Thank you so much. Bye-bye now.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

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