For a deed or job well done you may have heard your mom, a mentor, or a “report to” of yours applaud your work.  Perhaps you have been told to “put a feather in your cap.”  High praise indeed that feather is.  It’s a make-believe symbol of honor and achievement.  Or, way back when people did add a feather to one’s head wear.

But what is the origin of such a phrase? Well, as it is with many old school or old world expressions, that is a subject of some debate.

Way back in 1599 an English writer and traveler Richard Hansard noted that Hungarians should only wear a feather in their cap if they had killed a Turk.  The more feathers in your hat the more dead Turks.

The Native American tradition of adding a feather to the head-dress of any warrior for his bravery is well-known and well documented.

However, if you though as an American child it was a cool thing to recite/sing Yankee Doodle it may not have been after all.

Yankee Doodle went to town
A-riding on a pony,
Stuck a feather in his cap
And called it macaroni’.

It turns out that the word Yankee was used by the Brits to describe the naive or inexperienced.  Doodle was a “polite” way of inferring dumb or simpleton.  Simpletons were also called noodles.  Macaroni was slang for a dandy or fop.  A dandy or fop was how someone who paid far more attention to their appearance than to their substance was known.  That is, just by putting a feather in your cap doesn’t yet make you accomplished at the task at hand.

In short London mocked the revolutionary militia from day one of the uprising.  I guess the Ugly Americans got the last laugh.

As the late Paul Harvey would bellow,  “and now you know the rest of the story.”