hot
/hɒt
/adjective (hotter, hottest)
1Having a high degree of heat or a high temperature: it was hot inside the hall a hot day...
- The sea water temperature is a warm 37 degrees - hot enough for a bath!
- The summer months are hot with daytime temperatures in the low to mid 90's, but the winters are mild.
- The time to start this project is when the weather is sunny and hot - 80 degrees or more.
Synonyms
very warm, balmy, summery, tropical, boiling, boiling hot, blazing hot, baking, scorching, roasting, searing, flaming, parching, blistering, oven-like;
sweltering, torrid, sultry, humid, muggy, close, airless, oppressive, stifling
1.1Feeling or producing an uncomfortable sensation of heat: she felt hot and her throat was parched...
- Dr Kelly ‘looked very uncomfortable, very hot, very stressed’ at the hearing, according to his wife.
- We honestly hate wearing these hot uncomfortable uniforms that were not made for your climate.
- Even the word makes me feel itchy and hot and uncomfortable.
Synonyms
feverish, fevered, febrile, burning, flushed
informal with a temperature
rare pyretic
1.2(Of food or drink) prepared by heating and served without cooling: this soup is equally good hot or cold...
- An hour later the three were chatting over hot chocolate in the small cafe that served hot drinks and food to skaters.
- It was perhaps the quickest I had ever prepared a hot drink, and it was in under a minute.
- A simple meal of soup, bread and cheese, followed by a hot drink, is served and a basket is available for voluntary donations as you leave.
Synonyms
heated, piping, piping hot, sizzling, steaming, roasting, boiling, boiling hot, searing, scorching, scalding, red-hot
1.3 informal (Of an electric circuit) live or at a high voltage.Chipmakers are constantly battling to ensure that their electronic chips don't run too hot....
- The rectifiers are fully redundant and hot pluggable for replacement or maintenance without any down time.
- Locating a capacitor near a hot transistor, resistor or IC will shorten its life span to a couple of years.
1.4 informal Radioactive.It is so hot and radioactive that the miners use remote control equipment.
2(Of food) containing or consisting of pungent spices or peppers which produce a burning sensation when tasted: a very hot dish cooked with green chilli...
- I think it has a lot more kick and tastes even better with hot cherry peppers instead.
- The flavour of garlic is well known for its hot, dry pungent taste, savoured in the cuisine of many cultures.
- When we do see him eat out it is often at a Mexican take-out, where quantities of hot sauce disguise the taste.
Synonyms
spicy, spiced, peppery, piquant, highly seasoned, sharp, fiery, strong, pungent, aromatic
3Filled with passionate excitement, anger, or other strong emotion: the idea had been nurtured in his hot imagination her reply came boiling out of her, hot with rage...
- All I felt was frustration and anger and hot emotions roiling through me.
- His eyes were wide, and Egewe sensed the hot miasma of emotions that the boy was emitting.
Synonyms
angry, indignant, furious, fiery, seething, raging, boiling, fuming;
wrathful, enraged, infuriated, inflamed
3.1Lustful or erotic: steamy bed scenes which may be too hot for young fans...
- It is pretty uneventful except for introducing the new characters - Rachel and her dad, Alex, who is hot for Susan.
- Lehman also points out a bit of censorship when one line proved too hot for the dialogue track, though it's there for lip-readers.
- The truth is, even if they were dog-ugly I'd still be kind of hot for them.
3.2(Of popular music) strongly rhythmical and excitingly played: hot salsa and lambada dancing...
- Their guitars hammer away like sledges to anvils while the rhythm section is hot enough to melt steel!
- The film version of the Fred Ebb musical pulses with the rhythm of sweaty, backroom sex and hot jazz in 1920s Chicago.
- Arriving at the club Cameron and Allison at once hopped onto the dance floor to dance to a hot techno song.
4 informal Involving much activity, debate, or interest: the environment has become a very hot issue...
- These used to be the sites of hot political and literary debate.
- Both were criminally charged amid hot debate over whether the female officer should be punished in such a situation.
- But of late the hot debate is why many women are choosing not to marry and others are opting for the union later in life.
Synonyms
animated, heated, fierce, ‘lively’, intense, passionate, impassioned, spirited, ardent, fervent, feverish;
furious, violent, ferocious, acrimonious, stormy, tempestuous, savage
rare fervid, passional
4.1(Of news) fresh and of great interest: have I got some hot gossip for you!...
- The stories were hot topics for major news outlets and bloggers, due to the companies involved and the massive number of compromised records.
- Brunswick omits any reference to the date of the event so that it's unclear his story is not exactly hot news.
- Outsourcing may be a hot topic in the news, but the practice is as old as computers themselves.
Synonyms
new, fresh, recent, late, up to date, up to the minute;
brand new, just out, just released, just issued, hot off the press
informal bang up to date
4.2Currently popular, fashionable, or in demand: they know the hottest dance moves...
- So, anyway, I can exclusively report my hot surf fashion tips.
- The only way I know what TV shows are currently hot is by reading about them in magazines and such.
- In 12 months' time, the event will be staged again, and four more hopefuls will vie for the title of hot new fashion star.
Synonyms
popular, in demand, sought-after, in favour, well liked, well loved;
fashionable, in fashion, in vogue, all the rage
informal big, in, now, hip, trendy, cool
British informal, dated all the go
4.3(Of a person) sexually attractive: a hot chick...
- He's one of the hottest guys in school.
- How come Katie gets all the hot guys?
- People are a lot friendlier there than say, Paris, and the chicks are just as hot.
4.4 Hunting (Of the scent) fresh and strong, indicating that the quarry has passed recently.In a moment they raised a loud clamor, announcing that the scent was hot....
- Once picking up hot scent, he bores in and busts birds out of the cover to provide the gun a shot.
4.5 [predicative] (In children’s games) very close to finding or guessing something.
5 informal Very knowledgeable or skilful: Tony is very hot on local history...
- But then our Johann isn't so hot on the maths, even at the best of times.
- The purveyor of fine art, who also makes an honest buck with cartoons and wacky drawings, is hot on humour.
- They're great at scaring us with how much we pay into Europe, not so hot on telling us what we get out of it.
Synonyms
knowledgeable about, well informed about, au fait with, up on, well versed in, au courant with;
skilled at, expert at, enthusiastic about, keen on
informal clued up about, genned up about
5.1 [predicative, usually with negative] Good: this is not so hot for business...
- And while iMode may be fine for targeting kids and consumers, it's not so hot for business.
- I'm not too hot with electronics, so I managed to enlist my brother to sort the circuits out for me.
- Its demeanour is that of the same old story as they have once again failed to exceed their own limitations, making it a must for fans but not so hot for the rest of us.
5.2 (hot on) Regarding (something) as very important; strict about: local customs officers are hot on confiscations...
- Referee Nigel Owens was hot on this to begin with, and the Borders played accordingly.
- What about that book which a lot of the survivalists are so hot on?
- And since the Department of Public Prosecutions are so hot on prosecuting hatred and bigotry, let me point out an example to them.
6 informal Difficult to deal with: he found my story simply too hot to handle...
- Unfortunately, unlike cutting taxes, cutting spending is a task that even the most fearless of politicians usually finds too hot to handle.
- McCusker, Gray, and McEvoy were proving too hot to handle, Derry found fouling the only way to stop them.
- Australia found the target of six runs an over too hot to handle, slipping from 102 for one to 136 for seven in less than nine overs.
6.1(Of goods) stolen and difficult to dispose of because easily identifiable.The situation goes from bad to worse after they find a way to dispose of the hot merchandise....
- In those first vital hours, the police decided to publicise the raid as much as possible in a bid to make the stolen pictures too hot to handle.
- Police decided to publicise the robbery as much as possible in an effort to make the paintings too hot to handle.
Synonyms
stolen, illegally obtained, under the counter, illegal, illicit, unlawful, smuggled, bootleg, contraband
British informal dodgy, bent
6.2(Of a person) wanted by the police.
verb (hots, hotting, hotted) (hot something up or hot up) British informal
1Make or become hot: [with object]: he hotted up the flask...
- Unfortunately for them Del caught them as ‘Gladiator’ Rodney and ‘Police Woman’ Cassandra hotted things up in the flat.
- So we've hotted it up a lot and the attitude is far more curt.
- The temperature of a warm evening hotted up on the field too with David Tiernan and Kevin Browne in the thick on the action both receiving yellow cards on seven minutes.
1.1Become or make more lively or exciting: [no object]: the championship contest hotted up...
- The contest now hots up and votes are vital over the next few weeks as the contestants are whittled down to just two finalists.
- Since then the pace has hotted up further with a series of highly successful gigs and festival appearances on both sides of the Atlantic and, less than a year after his Mercury triumph, a follow-up album.
- Bookings started in May and the pace hotted up in June.
Phrases
go hot and cold
have the hots for
hot and bothered
hot and heavy
hot on the heels of
hot off the press (or presses)
hot to trot
hot under the collar
in hot pursuit
in hot water
make it (or things) hot for
Derivatives
hotness
/ noun ...- The food was great, so were the people, so was the music, so were the sizes of the shots (double trouble - yeah!) and let's not forget the hotness of guys in suits.
- The rich corn flavour and the sharp hotness of the dish makes it the kind of food you have no choice but to dedicate your whole attention to, as I discovered when I ordered one later for myself.
- This helped in clearing many wrong notions about the hotness of spices and doubts of visitors who for the first time were tasting Indian food, adds Dr. Thampi.
hottish
- First, being blessed with a fairly equable climate, we enjoy complaining about our weather with wild exaggeration on those days when it turns out less than perfect; on hottish days in the summer there are headlines beginning PHEW!
- But this was a fantastic mish-mash of vegetables and fenugreek leaves in a hottish sauce.
- You an oven heated to gas mark 6 or kind of medium to hottish!’
Origin
Old English hāt, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch heet and German heiss.
Hot shares an ancestor with heat. It has been used to describe sexual arousal since the Middle Ages, but a dictionary of US slang published in 1947 is the first to record the hots for desire, which may have originated in hot pants, first recorded in the 1920s and revived in Britain in the early 1970s to describe the women's fashion for skimpy shorts. People have used hot air for empty talk that is intended to impress since the late 19th century. See also blow