put a hat on a hat
To do something unnecessary, to go over the top
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“That extra decoration is just putting a hat on a hat.”
“The presentation was already perfect, so adding more slides was just putting a hat on a hat.”
“By adding unnecessary flourishes to an already elegant design, the architect was merely putting a hat on a hat, obscuring the original vision.”
- 01
all hat and no cattle
Full of big talk but lacking action, power, or substance; pretentious.
- 02
all hat and no cowboy
Full of big talk but lacking action, power, or substance; pretentious.
- 03
black hat
A villain in a story, especially in a Western (a film or other work of the Western genre).
- 04
brick in one's hat
Drunkenness.
- 05
buy straw hats in winter
Of stocks, to buy when both demand and price are low, so as to sell when demand and price are high.
- 06
does the Pope wear a funny hat
Obviously! Rhetorical question in response to a question where the answer is an emphatic yes.
- 07
eat one's hat
Used in a result clause to express disbelief in a proposition expressed in a conditional clause.
- 08
gray hat
A morally ambiguous character; an antihero.
Last updated August 10, 2026