Hatter

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈhætə(ɹ)/

Definitions

1. A hat maker or seller is often called a milliner, and this term can describe a fictional character known for peculiar behavior or insanity, especially in literature linked to the 19th century
2. This noun references an individual who crafts or retails headwear, but it may also allude to a literary personage characterized by oddity or madness, frequently seen in 19th-century narratives
3. This term denotes someone involved in creating or selling hats, while also referring to a fictional character known for eccentricity and madness, particularly from 19th-century literary works

Etymology: The most striking thing about "hatter" is that its everyday sense of a hat-maker is not its only story. The word is built from "hat" plus the agent suffix "-er", the same ending that gives us "baker" or "painter", so a hatter is simply someone who makes or deals in hats. The noun came into Middle English as a straightforward compound of this kind. The word's name for the trade is plain, but the "Mad Hatter" that Lewis Carroll later made famous has been linked to a different root. An English dialect word meaning "to entangle" lies behind a related sense, and it has parallels in Low German forms such as "verhaddern" and "verheddern", which carry the same idea of tangling or confusing. Whether this older verb fed into the trade name or the two simply overlap is not settled, so the safer account is that "hatter" as a maker of hats is a transparent compound, while the tangling verb belongs to a separate, older thread of meaning.

Synonyms: milliner