Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A long straight pin usually with an ornamental head, used to secure a hat to the wearer's hair.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A long metallic pin. often with a fancy head, used for fastening on a woman's hat.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun a long sturdy pin used by women to secure a hat to their hair.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A long straight pin, often with a decorative head, used to secure a woman's hat to her hair.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a long sturdy pin used by women to secure a hat to their hair

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

hat +‎ pin

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Examples

  • Wonder Woman is a DC Comics character -- Warner Bros.-parent Time Warner owns DC Comics -- who is a corporate suit by day, but who but can change into her alter ego at the drop of a hatpin.

    Adrianne Palicki is NBC's new Wonder Woman Lisa de Moraes 2011

  • Lalique's flora and fauna are everywhere—nude feminine figures with insect wings on a necklace, a lizard lorgnette, an ivy and clover hatpin, swans here, wheat sheaves there, a pair of white peacocks with multicolor tails standing on a heart-shaped citrine.

    A Display of Lalique's Beauty Judy Fayard 2011

  • Right before his head was cut off and Clodia stuck her hatpin through his tongue.

    Matthew Yglesias » The Missing Faction 2009

  • Starting with Episode 5, we have the very beautiful hatpin on the back of the stewardess cap that was fashioned after stewardess Sheila Riley's personal Pan Am pin she wore on the flight to Berlin.

    From Pillbox Hat to Bullet Bra: The Anatomy of a Pan Am Stewardess Uniform 2011

  • A woman's hatpin could go through a plum pudding not more easily than did my blade go through the Italian.

    Chapter 11 2010

  • In a coup, Ms. Cappello tracks down one of Jackson's patients, who as an 8-year-old girl in 1931 swallowed a hatpin.

    Medicine Thomas Vinciguerra 2011

  • Such was her concentration that when Ian spoke to her, she jumped as though he had run a hatpin into her, and put a hand to her palpitating heart.

    Sick Cycle Carousel 2010

  • She arranged her hair-her one real beauty-into a neat French braid, and set a pathetic little excuse for a hat squarely on the result, securing it with a dagger-like hatpin.

    red dust Ryn Cricket 2010

  • "He told me, 'If I'm goin' to lie on my face wi 'my buttocks bared, I want the lass under me, not behind me wi' a hatpin! '"

    Sick Cycle Carousel 2010

  • Then again, Santorum isn't the sharpest hatpin in the box, so who knows?

    PA-SEN: Columnist Charges Santorum's Polka Ad Is A Fraud 2009

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