brick in one's hat

English

Etymology

US, circa 1846.[1] Presumably due to staggering walk when drunk; compare top-heavy with drink.[2]

Noun

brick in one's hat

  1. (US, obsolete, idiomatic) drunkenness.
    • 1846, “Magnelia Pedestria; or, Leaves from a Pedestrian’s Note Book”, The Yale Literary Magazine, v. 12, November, 1846, p. 33:
      Seated at the same table with our Mr.—, was a gentleman, who, to use the current phrase, ‘had a brick in his hat.’
    • 1849, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kavanagh, p. 177–178:
      Her husband had taken to the tavern, and often came home very late, “with a brick in his hat,” as Sally expressed it.

Usage notes

Used in various constructions, particularly “with a brick in his hat” and “to have a brick in one’s hat”, meaning “to be drunk”.

References

  1. ↑ See Yale quote of 1846 referring to it as a “current phrase”.
  2. ↑ John Stephen Farmer, William Ernest Henley, A Dictionary of Slang and Colloquial English, 1905, p. 216
  • Richard Hopwood Thornton, An American Glossary, Volume 1, 1912, p. 101
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