tinfoil hat
3
9.9
- noun
- /ˈtɪnˌfɔɪl hæt/
:
sombrero de papel de aluminio
- Better put on the tinfoil hat and go into hiding.
- wear a tinfoil hat
I'm sorry, or I'm gonna RIP that tinfoil hat off your head.
- I'm sorry, or I'm gonna RIP that tinfoil hat off your head.
- What is your tinfoil hat theory on why this could have happened?
- Basically, I I came to to a, you know, a fork in the road where I could either go full tinfoil hat, go live off the grid.
- This is this is set off a wild wave of conspiracy theories online, the sort of stuff that only unstable tinfoil hat loons could possibly believe.
- I sat at this desk at the time the Flynn Kislyak story was just a tinfoil hat rumor and urged that this be investigated.
- You got to love the immediate, immediate tinfoil hat.
Examples
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No tin foil hat is necessary to see that something is rotten in Washington, D.C.
Blog text (13) -
What is your tinfoil hat theory on why this could have happened?
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Finally, a use for my tinfoil hat!
Blog text (12) -
I may soon end up walking the streets of Boston with a sandwich board and a tinfoil hat.
Blog text (26) -
Adjust your tinfoil hat.
Blog text (23) -
The idiots on Huffington Post tell me I am a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist.
Blog text (30) -
Ok people, don your tin foil hats lest you doubt or be gotten at by the anti-truth rays of the elitist lizard people.
Blog text (8) -
People often joke about wearing a tinfoil hat to avoid being monitored by aliens.
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She wore a tinfoil hat to a gathering, believing it would protect her from government surveillance.
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The comic featured a character who always spoke about his tinfoil hat to explain his strange beliefs.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The literal sense 'a hat made of tinfoil' is directly compositional from 'tinfoil' + 'hat', so a learner who knows both words will grasp the concrete object. However, the idiomatic meaning—a symbol of paranoia or belief in conspiracies—is culturally specific and not fully predictable from the constituents without exposure, so the expression is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Tinfoil hat comes from the clear image of someone folding shiny tinfoil into a small hat to block 'mind control' or secret signals. One popular story says people joked that wearing such a hat would stop the brain being watched, so today calling someone a 'tinfoil hat' means they seem to believe 'conspiracy theories' or look 'paranoid'.