Bonnet (headgear)

Bonnet has been used as the name for a wide variety of headgear for both sexes—more often female—since the Middle Ages. As with "hat" and "cap", it is impossible to generalize styles for which the word has been used, but there is for both sexes a tendency to describe it having soft material and lacking a brim, or at least one all the way round, rather than just at the front. Yet the term has also been used, for example, for steel helmets in Scotland (1505), where it has long been especially popular.

Headgear tied under the chin with a string is especially likely to be called a bonnet. Other features associated with bonnets as opposed to hats are that the forehead is not covered, but the back of the head often is. The outdoor headgear of female servants and workers is more likely to be called a bonnet. It is often worn outside over a thinner everyday head covering, worn at all times. Hats are typically stiffer, worn on the top of the head with the crown and brim roughly horizontal, while bonnets are pushed back, covering the back of the head, with any brim often approaching the vertical at the front. Other types of bonnet might otherwise be called "caps", for example the Scottish blue bonnet worn by working-class men and women, a kind of large floppy beret.

Bonnet derives from the same word in French, where it originally indicated a type of material. From the 18th century, bonnet headgear, previously worn by elite women informally at home (as well as more generally by working women), became adopted as high fashion, and until at least the late 19th century, bonnet was the dominant term used for female hats. In the 21st century, only a few specialized kinds of headgear are still called bonnets, commonly those worn by babies and the feather bonnets of Scottish Highland regiments, as well as the war bonnets of North American Plains Indians. In addition, bonnets are worn by women as an outer Christian headcovering in some denominations such as the Amish, Mennonite and Brethren churches among the Anabaptist branch of Christianity, and with Conservative Quakers, mainly in the Americas.