1935 publicity photo of the Hoosier Hot Shots musical quartet for NBC’s National Barn Dance radio program (which was a forerunner of the more famous Grand Ole Opry); the character of Uncle Ezra, played by Pat Barnett, is on the left
9 September 2024
Perhaps the most common sense of hotshot today is that of a very capable person, especially one who is brash and flashy, but the word has had a variety of meanings over the centuries. The underlying metaphor underneath all the senses, however, is that of a bullet, warm from having been fired.
Hotshot first appears at the close of the sixteenth century in the sense of a reckless person. We see it in George Peele’s 1593 The Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First, when it is used in the context of someone whose courage in battle comes out of a bottle:
Friar. Come boie we must buckle I see,
The prince is of my profession right:
Rather than he wil lose his wenche,
He will fight Ab ouo vsque ad mala.
Nouice. O maister doubt you not but your Nouice will prooue a whot shot, with a bottle of Metheglin.
(Ab ovo usque ad mala literally means “from egg to fruit,” a metaphorical reference to dinner courses, equivalent to our present-day from soup to nuts; the locus classicus is Horace’s Satire 3. Metheglin is a variety of spiced mead, a word borrowed from Welsh.)
But at about the same time, appearing in print a few years after Peele’s Chronicle, the term is used to refer to a skilled lover. We see it in John Marston’s play The Malcontent, published in 1604:
Bili[oso]. Mary my good Lord quoth hee, your Lordship shall euer finde amongst a hundred French-men, fortie hot shottes: amongst a hundred Spaniardes, threescore bragarts: amongst a hundred Dutch-men, fourescore drunkardes: amongst a hundred English-men, fourescore and ten mad-men: and amongst an hundred Welch-men.
Bian[ca]. What my Lord?
Bili. Fourescore and nineteene gentlemen.
This sexual sense could be applied regardless of the person’s gender. This sense, however, fell out of use by the end of the seventeenth century. We see it again in the twentieth, but this later incarnation is undoubtedly a specific application of the more general one of a capable person that we’re familiar with today.
The capable-person sense is in place by the 1920s. Here’s an example from the Atlanta Journal of 4 February 1921:
Speaking of Mr. Ladue, this lively gentleman hails from Colgate university. His first name is Frederick, he being named after either Frederick the Great, Frederick the Saxon or Fred Fulton, I forget which. However that may be, he is a hot shot as a referee, and it is a delight to watch him run off a game. You never saw a fast basketball game until you see Mr. Ladue referee one. He demands an absolutely clean game with personal contact at a minimum.
There are undoubtedly earlier examples of this sense to be found, but it’s difficult to differentiate this sense from that of a literal heated bullet or the metaphorical and rhetorical equivalent. This literal sense of hot shot comes from the practice of heating cannon projectiles prior to firing in order to turn them into incendiary rounds. Such use could be particularly devastating in naval battles. This gunnery sense is recorded by 1666 when it appears in an anonymous poem about the death of Admiral Christopher Myngs from wounds he received in the Second Anglo-Dutch War:
No sooner had the black-mouth’d Ord’nance (hot
With Hell-bred Flames, and big with Flemmish shot)
Spit forth its Venim’d blasts, enough to make
The well compacted Universe to shake,
But straight the Waves (supposing thou wert dead)
Leapt up to catch the Airie Substance fled.
On the page, the parenthetical hot shot is split between the two lines. Grammatically it must be the subject of the adjective Flemmish, but to make the rhyme scheme work, hot and shot must be at the end of the two respective lines.
This literal gunnery sense is not the origin of the earlier capable-person sense, but both stem from a metaphor of a hot bullet. We do, however, see a metaphorical use of the literal gunnery sense to mean an barbed rhetorical utterance. Playwright Aphra Behn uses this metaphorical sense in her 1681 The Second Part of the Rover. The passage in question is an exchange between the title character and a Spanish courtesan who is in love with him:
Will[more]. My fair false Sybil, what Inspirations are you waiting from Heav’n, new Arts to cheat Mankind!—tell me, with what face canst thou be Devout, or ask any thing from thence who hast made so lewd a use of what it has already lavisht on thee?
La Nu[uche]. Oh my careless Rover! I perceive all your hot shot is not yet spent in Battel, you have a Volley in reserve for me still—Faith, Officer, the Town has wanted mirth in your absence.
This rhetorical sense of a barbed verbal volley remains in use today.
I’m not going to detail all the different senses of hot shot, but another one that is notable is that of dose of heroin or other drug that has been laced with poison. This sense is in place by 1936, when it is recorded in a glossary of underworld slang in the journal American Speech:
HOT SHOT. Cyanide or other fast-working poison concealed in dope to do away with a dangerous or troublesome addict. The hot shot kills the addict, in contrast to flipping him or taking him [i.e., rendering unconscious].
Sources:
Behn, Aphra. The Second Part of the Rover. London: Jacob Tonson, 1681, 13. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.
Blake, Morgan. “Eddie Rawson Brilliant Hero in Red and Black’s Victory over Commodores.” Atlanta Journal (Georgia), 4 February 1921, 24/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. hot-shot, n.
Horace. Satire 3, lines 6–7. In Horace. Satires. Epistles. The Art of Poetry. H. R. Fairclough, trans. Loeb Classical Library 194. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1926, 32–33. Loeb Classical Library Online.
Marston, John (with additions by John Webster). The Malcontent. London: Valentine Simmes for William Aspley, 1604, sig. E3r. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.
Maurer, David W. “The Argot of the Underworld Narcotic Addict.” American Speech, 11.2 (April 1936), 116–27 at 122/2. JSTOR.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2008, s.v. hotshot, n.
Peele, George. The Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First. London: Abell Jeffes, 1593, sig. C3v. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.
“Upon the Death of the Truly Valiant and Magnanimous Sr. Christoph. Minns Wounded at Sea.” Oxford: Joseph Godwin, 1666. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.
Photo credit: Kaufman-Fabry, Chicago, photographers for NBC Radio, 1935. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain photo.