means A covering for the head and neck, usually attached to a garment, that shields you from weather or hides your face — and, by extension, the neighborhood you call home.

from From Old English 'hod,' the simple word for a head-covering, a cousin of 'hat' and of German 'Hut.' That same 'hood' surfaces as a suffix in words like 'childhood' and 'brotherhood,' where an older sense — 'condition, state, rank' — survives. The slang 'hood' meaning neighborhood is a 20th-century American shortening of 'neighborhood,' and 'hood' for a tough or criminal is a separate clip, from 'hoodlum,' a late-19th-century American word of murky origin (the popular tales about a backwards-spelled gang leader's name are almost certainly invented).