"brass hat" meaning in English

See brass hat in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-brass hat.ogg [Australia] Forms: brass hats [plural]
Etymology: From the military brass insignia on a service hat. Head templates: {{en-noun}} brass hat (plural brass hats)
  1. (military, slang, metonymically) A high-ranking officer. Tags: metonymically, slang Categories (topical): Military, People Synonyms: brasshat Related terms: brass-hatted, top brass

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for brass hat meaning in English (3.1kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "From the military brass insignia on a service hat.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "brass hats",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "brass hat (plural brass hats)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English metonyms",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Military",
          "orig": "en:Military",
          "parents": [
            "Society",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "People",
          "orig": "en:People",
          "parents": [
            "Human",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1982, Countdown begins for Space Shuttle, The New York Times",
          "text": "\"American brass hats make no secret that they regard outer space as a potential theater of military operations,\" it said."
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006, Andrew Roth, Obituary: Lord Monro of Langholm, The Guardian",
          "text": "He raised his first storm in January 1967 when, as leader of the \"Save the Argylls\" campaign, he claimed the brass hats had driven the regiment's commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Colin \"Mad Mitch\" Mitchell, into resignation."
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Andrew Roth, Gaddafi faces endgame as he bribes civilians to fight for him, The Independent",
          "text": "This being Libya, there were conflicting signals yesterday – an army brass hat captured here, a counter-attack by Gaddafi forces there […]"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 May 15, Charlie Campbell, “The Voting in Thailand’s Election Is Finished, But the Politicking Is Just Beginning”, in Time",
          "text": "[…] with particularly young Thais—including 3.3 million first-time voters—backing the upstart party’s bold pledges to weaken the political role of brass hats and amend the nation’s strict royal defamation law […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A high-ranking officer."
      ],
      "id": "en-brass_hat-en-noun-nRQ0Ed-7",
      "links": [
        [
          "military",
          "military"
        ],
        [
          "officer",
          "officer"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(military, slang, metonymically) A high-ranking officer."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "brass-hatted"
        },
        {
          "word": "top brass"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "brasshat"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "metonymically",
        "slang"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "government",
        "military",
        "politics",
        "war"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-brass hat.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/40/En-au-brass_hat.ogg/En-au-brass_hat.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/En-au-brass_hat.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "brass hat"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From the military brass insignia on a service hat.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "brass hats",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "brass hat (plural brass hats)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "brass-hatted"
    },
    {
      "word": "top brass"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
        "English lemmas",
        "English metonyms",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English slang",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "en:Military",
        "en:People"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1982, Countdown begins for Space Shuttle, The New York Times",
          "text": "\"American brass hats make no secret that they regard outer space as a potential theater of military operations,\" it said."
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006, Andrew Roth, Obituary: Lord Monro of Langholm, The Guardian",
          "text": "He raised his first storm in January 1967 when, as leader of the \"Save the Argylls\" campaign, he claimed the brass hats had driven the regiment's commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Colin \"Mad Mitch\" Mitchell, into resignation."
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Andrew Roth, Gaddafi faces endgame as he bribes civilians to fight for him, The Independent",
          "text": "This being Libya, there were conflicting signals yesterday – an army brass hat captured here, a counter-attack by Gaddafi forces there […]"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 May 15, Charlie Campbell, “The Voting in Thailand’s Election Is Finished, But the Politicking Is Just Beginning”, in Time",
          "text": "[…] with particularly young Thais—including 3.3 million first-time voters—backing the upstart party’s bold pledges to weaken the political role of brass hats and amend the nation’s strict royal defamation law […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A high-ranking officer."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "military",
          "military"
        ],
        [
          "officer",
          "officer"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(military, slang, metonymically) A high-ranking officer."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "metonymically",
        "slang"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "government",
        "military",
        "politics",
        "war"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-brass hat.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/40/En-au-brass_hat.ogg/En-au-brass_hat.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/En-au-brass_hat.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "brasshat"
    }
  ],
  "word": "brass hat"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.