English

Noun

brick in one's hat ‎(uncountable)

1. (US, obsolete, idiomatic) drunkenness.
   • 1846, “Magnelia Pedestria; or, Leaves from a Pedestrian’s Note Book”, The Yale Literary Magazine, v. 12, November, 1846, p. 33:

     Seated at the same table with our Mr.—, was a gentleman, who, to use the current phrase, ‘had a brick in his hat.’

   • 1849, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kavanagh, p. 177–178:

     Her husband had taken to the tavern, and often came home very late, “with a brick in his hat,” as Sally expressed it.

Usage notes

Used in various constructions, particularly “with a brick in his hat” and “to have a brick in one’s hat”, meaning “to be drunk”.

References

1. ↑ See Yale quote of 1846 referring to it as a “current phrase”.
2. ↑ John Stephen Farmer, William Ernest Henley, A Dictionary of Slang and Colloquial English, 1905, p. 216

• Richard Hopwood Thornton, An American Glossary, Volume 1, 1912, p. 101