The Knitted Hat Survey

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you guys doing?

Doing well. Who’s this?

This is David Parker from Canton, New York.

What’s on your mind, David?

All right, so I’m close to the Canadian border up here, you know, and we have pretty harsh winters.

And as a child growing up, my biggest question, I guess, was, you know, what’s a winter hat called?

Up here, we call it a toque.

Most people call it a beanie or just a straight-up winter hat.

But for me, I moved down south a couple years ago, and when I told someone they were wearing a toque, they looked at me like I had six heads.

So I was just wondering where a toque came from, if that’s proper or is beanie proper.

I’m just kind of curious.

Wait, David, this was your biggest question as a child?

Not why was the sky blue or where do babies come from or is there a Santa Claus?

I am, you know, different strokes for different folks.

Okay.

Gotcha.

Okay. There’s a couple of different layers to this. Let’s just kind of break them down as quickly as we can.

The Canada reference is totally appropriate because toque, that’s T-U-Q-U-E, is a very Canadian word that refers to a knitted hat that you would wear to keep your head warm.

It is a variation of the French word toque, T-O-Q-U-E, which refers to several different kinds of hats.

But most people in the world know that toque is the tall white chef hat.

You know, the one that you see like on top of Chef Boyardee?

That’s a toque.

So toque is a variant of toque.

And both of these words are related to Spanish and Italian words meaning to be made of silk or silk fabric.

Because there are similar words in those languages.

This is according to the Le Petit Robert dictionary.

Now, that’s interesting and I love that.

But I really want to talk about beanie.

Because when I moved to California, and I don’t know why they do it, but people here sometimes wear knitted hats even when it’s 80 degrees outside.

It’s a style thing, I guess.

I don’t really understand it.

But they call them beanies.

I never, ever, ever, never, ever heard beanie referring to that kind of hat when I lived in Missouri or when I lived in New York City.

Never.

Really?

Not once.

Ever.

And when it came to California, it is the dominant word for that headgear.

So what I did was I created a survey and I put it on the radio show website.

It’s called the Great Knitted Hat Survey.

And I’ve got pictures of hats with a lot of different answers.

And you can go there now, look for the Great Knitted Hat Survey, and take that survey.

And so I’ve got almost a thousand answers at this point to figure out what’s happening with toque and toque and beanie and sock hat and watch cap and skull cap.

Because in my world, beanie is the small skull cap made out of triangular shapes, pieces of fabric that maybe has a button or a propeller in the middle, maybe even a little poof ball.

Yes.

Yeah. Let me ask you, does a toque have a puff ball at the top of it, a little ball or no?

Well, again, that’s kind of like just a style hat.

If it was like little ear flaps and a little ball on top, I’d still call that a toque.

It could also be what most people would call kind of like a skull cap,

Like just a very form-fitting hat that just goes just above your ear, just over your ears.

And that’s a toque to me, and it’s always been a toque.

And then when I’ve heard beanie, I just looked at them like they were crazy.

You sound like a young man. How old are you?

Yeah, I’m only 26.

Okay, so here’s the thing I discovered I think is true,

That beanie for a kind of knitted hat that keeps your head warm tends to skew super young,

Like people under 30 and mainly on the West Coast.

But it has made its way eastward to the north through sports, through skating and surfing in particular,

But also other kinds of sports.

And it has traveled in all the popular ways that language travels through cool kids and the cool musicians

And the cool sports figures and so forth.

David, now you know Grant’s biggest question as an adult.

He put a whole survey online, got thousands of results.

Less than a thousand, but yeah, lots of results.

But I’m hoping with this, you’ve given us an opening to talk about.

I’m hoping people will go find the Great Knitted Hat survey.

Just Google that.

It’ll be the first response.

Well, there you go, David.

I hope that helps some.

So, Tuke, you’re fine with.

It’s very Canadian.

I’m not surprised that they use it in Canton, New York,

Given that you guys are a stone’s throw from the border.

Well, yeah, no, it definitely answers my question.

I’m happy to know it.

Okay.

Cool.

Take care, man.

Appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

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