hot

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Very recent and exciting; in great demand.

   This is the hottest new restaurant in town.

2. 2
   adj

   Carrying electric current; live.

   Be careful, that wire is hot.

3. 3
   adj

   Recently stolen and difficult to sell safely.

   The police suspected the jewellery was hot.

4. 4
   adj

   Having a high level of dangerous radioactivity.

   Workers handle the hot fuel rods with great care.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Hot is an Old English word sharing an ancestor with heat. It has described sexual arousal since the Middle Ages. The American expression the hots for, meaning “desire,” is first recorded in 1940 and may have originated in to have hot pants for, first recorded in the 1920s.

From Middle English hot, hat, from Old English hāt (“hot”), from Proto-West Germanic *hait, from Proto-Germanic *haitaz (“hot”), from Proto-Indo-European *keHy- (“hot; to heat”). Cognate with Scots hate, hait (“hot”), North Frisian hiet (“hot”), Saterland Frisian heet (“hot”), West Frisian hjit (“hot”), Dutch heet (“hot”), German Low German heet (“hot”), German heiß (“hot”), Danish hed (“hot”), Swedish het (“hot”), Icelandic heitur (“hot”). Superseded non-native Middle English chaud, from Old French chaut (“hot”); and early Modern English calent, from Latin calēns (“hot”).

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary