fedora
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of fedora
1885–90, said to be named after Fédora, play by Victorien Sardou (1831–1908)
Explanation
A fedora is a felt hat with a wide brim and indentations on top. Many 1930s and 1940s actors wore fedoras in movies. Most fedoras are creased along the top, or crown, and pinched on either side, and they're sometimes trimmed around the center with a wide ribbon. Although fedoras might make you think of 1920s gangsters or Indiana Jones, the earliest fedoras were worn by women, and even became a symbol of the early women's rights movement. The word comes from an 1882 play, Fédora, in which the actress Sarah Bernhardt wore a fedora.
Vocabulary lists containing fedora
Put a Lid On It: Hats, Hoods, and Other Headgear
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The Red Pyramid
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Life Is So Good
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
This includes Dolan’s fronting of an embarrassing blues-rock band, often while sporting a fedora, and he inflicts his music on audiences by installing himself as the opener for acts like the Eagles.
From Salon ● Jul. 8, 2026
Director Spike Lee, with wife Tonya Lewis Lee, showed his distinctive style with a suit featuring a purple fedora hat and matching bow tie, and a bag made of silver cassettes.
From BBC ● Mar. 15, 2026
Kid Rock headlined in a furry white vest, cutoff shorts and a fedora, singing his late-1990s hit “Bawitdaba” to a modest crowd indoors.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 9, 2026
Stone wandered around, with a recorder hidden in his fedora, documenting and then disassembling all that, as well as what he recorded in his travels.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 10, 2025
A man wearing a brown fedora hat and carrying a suitcase approached the window.
From Nazi Saboteurs by Samantha Seiple
Instead of fedoras and pillboxes, hair became increasingly emphasized—and longer.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 28, 2025
That meant bringing a splash of West Side Story to the ceremony, with the singer dancing on rooftops and fire escapes with dancers dressed in 1950s-style fedoras.
From BBC ● Sep. 12, 2024
The first seeds of paranoia arrived when the distinctive fedoras of Hoover’s FBI agents began appearing in droves as Los Alamos opened its badge-issuing office in 1943.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 22, 2023
The subjects of his paintings swing rackets in tennis whites, slow dance in full skirts, play the horn in fedoras.
From New York Times ● Jul. 18, 2023
The back is relatively tranquil, stacks of fedoras and berets arrayed on curved wooden shelves.
From "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
