eat one's hat

Declare one's certainty that something will not happen or is untrue. This hyperbolic expression almost always follows an if-clause, as in If he's on time, I'll eat my hat, that is, “I'll consume my headgear if I'm wrong.” Charles Dickens used it in Pickwick Papers (1837): “If I knew as little of life as that, I'd eat my hat and swallow the buckle whole.” [First half of 1800s]

Words nearby eat one's hat

eat high off the hog, eat humble pie, eat in, eat like a bird, eat one's cake and have it, too, eat one's hat, eat one's heart out, eat one's words, eat out, eat out of someone's hand, eat shit