hatting

Hatting refers to the act or practice involving hats, and it appears in several distinct contexts with different meanings. In everyday language, hatting denotes the act of donning a hat as part of clothing, style, or function, and can also describe the broader practice of wearing, choosing, or using hat accessories.

In fashion and millinery, hatting describes the craft of creating hats. This includes design concepts, blocking and shaping, material selection (such as felt, straw, or leather), and decorative finishing. Professionals in millinery may work with patterns, trims, and closures to produce functional and stylistic headwear for diverse markets, from everyday wear to special occasions.

Culturally and socially, hats serve symbolic or ceremonial roles, and hatting can refer to adopting or exchanging specific headwear for events, performances, or rites. Examples include ceremonial or academic hats, occupational headgear, and hats worn for cultural or religious observances. The etiquette and significance of different hats can convey information about status, role, or affiliation within a group.

In mathematics and statistics, hatting is a more technical usage tied to the convention of placing a hat over symbols to denote estimators, such as theta-hat or y-hat. The term is informal and not universally standardized, but practitioners may describe the process of applying an estimator or interpreting a fitted value as “hatting” a parameter.

Overall, hatting encompasses both practical and symbolic uses of hats, as well as a niche mathematical terminology associated with estimators. See also millinery, hat, and estimator notation.