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From a girl here, I'm Minyeon Fogarty.

This week, I have a quick and dirty tip about the difference between tipping your hat and tipping your hand.

And in a specially-medie middle about the seemingly illogical phrase,

Ya-no.

Keith, one of our regular listeners, wrote in recently to ask about two similar idioms.

He wasn't sure about the difference between tip your hand and tip your hat. Keith, here's the story.

To tip your hat means acknowledge something that someone else did.

You might tip your hat to the football coach who suggested a winning play,

or tip your hat to your dad if he made an extra delicious dinner.

This expression dates all the way back to the 1600s when it was customary for men to wear hats

when they were outside the home. You would tip your hat, that is, touch your hand to the brim,

or lift the whole thing off your head, to greet someone or acknowledge their presence.

You'd also take off your hat completely when you entered a building or sat down to eat,

as a way of showing respect. As John Don put it in one of his poems, when now,

Meetest One, Raised by Formal Hat. A variation of this phrase is hats off too,

as in hats off to Susie are employee of the month, and it's related to the expression hat in hand.

If you go to someone hat in hand, you approach them with extreme deference, usually to ask for a

favor or a beg for charity. Your hat would be in your hand as a sign of respect and submission.

Now let's look at our next idiom. To tip your hand means to accidentally reveal your intentions

before you mean to. For example, you might tip your hand if you let a real estate agent know

how much you love the house you're looking at. Now they know that if you try to negotiate on price,

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