Hood

Part of speech: noun, verb

Pronunciation: /hʊd/

Definitions

1. A piece of fabric or material attached to clothing used to cover the head and neck ; a particular area or neighborhood within a city or town ; an individual involved in illegal or criminal activities
2. Clothing that protects or conceals the head and sometimes the neck ; a designated locality or part of a city recognized by its residents ; a person known for engaging in unlawful behavior
3. A garment feature designed to shield the head and neck from weather ; a section or division of a city often with identifiable cultural or social traits ; a criminal or gangster associated with unlawful acts

Etymology: The head covering came first. Old English "hōd" meant a hat or covering for the head, and it is a close relative of German "Hut" and Dutch "hoed", which both still mean "hat". Its distant cousins reach as far as Avestan "xåda" and Old Persian "xudā", names for a hat in ancient Iranian languages, which shows how old the root is. The word's oldest sense was simply a hat, not a sheltering cover in the modern sense. The modern garment hood, a cowl attached to a coat, grew out of the same idea and kept the same name. The word's other senses are mostly later shortenings that came from different places. It was clipped from "hoodlum", a word for a young street thug, and from "neighborhood", where it survives in the shortened form "nabe" among related forms. Its newest sense came from "hoodie", the familiar name for a sweatshirt with a hood, which was itself shortened to "hood" and picked up the streetwise tone of "hoodlum" along the way.

Synonyms: cover, cap, shroud, cloak, headgear

Antonyms: exposure, uncovering, revelation, disclosure, open