{"id":457,"date":"2008-12-23T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-23T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/ten-gallon-hat\/"},"modified":"2008-12-23T12:02:55","modified_gmt":"2008-12-23T18:02:55","slug":"ten-gallon-hat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/12\/ten-gallon-hat\/","title":{"rendered":"“Ten-gallon hat”"},"content":{"rendered":"

This term has generated at least two plausible speculations about its origin.<\/p>\n

Contrary to the first impression at hearing or reading the term, a ten-gallon hat does not hold ten gallons. Such a hat would best befit a clown, not a cowboy.<\/p>\n

No, “ten-gallon” does not refer to the internal volume of the hat.<\/p>\n

Instead, there are at least two possible origins to the term.<\/p>\n

Both origins are from Spanish, both origins relate to distinguishing this type of hat from a sombrero<\/em>, and both origins represent the effect of an outsider’s perspective in hearing a foreign-language term and corrupting it into something in the listener’s native tongue (in this case, English).<\/p>\n

The first possible origin is based on the idea that a “ten-gallon hat” is for the upper classes, in contrast to the lowly sombrero<\/em> for the lower classes. Upper-class cowboys were considered to be more gallant than commoners. The phrase “so gallant” in English is expressed as “tan gal\u00e1n” in Spanish.<\/p>\n

If you “squint your ears” at the sound of “tan gal\u00e1n”, you easily could get “ten gallon” in English.<\/p>\n

The second possible origin is based on the fact that a vaquero<\/em> — Spanish for “cowboy” — would be awarded for cowboy expertise a narrow band, often braided, around the crown of the hat. Ten of these narrow bands on one hat represented the ultimate in cowboy skills. The Spanish word “gal\u00f3n”<\/a> refers to such a band; “galones” is the plural of this word.<\/p>\n

A non-Spanish-speaking, native-English-speaking listener could easily misinterpret “galones” into “gallons”.<\/p>\n

The other meaning of “gal\u00f3n” is, in fact, “gallon”, so a native-English speaker with a knowledge of this primary definition of “gal\u00f3n” could easily interpret “diez galones” as “ten gallons” instead of “ten bands”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This term has generated at least two plausible speculations about its origin. Contrary to the first impression at hearing or reading the term, a ten-gallon hat does not hold ten gallons. Such a hat would best befit a clown, not a cowboy. No, “ten-gallon” does not refer to the internal volume of the hat. Instead,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,26,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foreign-languages","category-mispronunciations","category-outsiders-perspective"],"yoast_head":"\n"Ten-gallon hat" - Kirk Mahoney . com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/12\/ten-gallon-hat\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Ten-gallon hat" - Kirk Mahoney . com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This term has generated at least two plausible speculations about its origin. 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