often seen in the street without a hat

Option five to what? The question's about whether or not you've heard the word used before, not people's reactions to it!

I quite like it myself though. As wonderlanded's helpfully pointed out above, it doesn't fulfill the same function as confrontational, and when I've heard it used it's not in a situation where I can easily think of a synonym. And I'm all for increasing vocabulary - though as a descriptive grammarian rather than prescriptive (...most of the time...) I would say that.