21 October 2022
Being a basic word, hot unsurprisingly traces back to the Old English hat. Besides its literal meaning relating to heat, hot also has a myriad of figurative senses, many of which are also quite old. I’ll outline the appearance of a few of the more popular figurative senses, but only a few. One could write a book on the different meanings of hot.
The use of hot to denote passion or intensity of feeling also dates to before the Norman Conquest. One such use is in the poem known as The Seafarer, in a passage that may be my favorite in all of English literature:
Forþon nu min hyge hweorfeð ofer hreðer-locan,
min mod-sefa mid mere-flode
ofer hwæles eþel hweorfeð wide,
eoþan sceatas, cymeð eft to me
gifre ond grædig; gielleð anfloga,
hweteð on hwæl-weg hreðer unwearnum
ofer holma gelagu. Forþon me hatran sind
Dryhtnes dreamas þonne þis deade lif,
læne on londe.
(Therefore, now my thought turns throughout my breast, my heart with the sea’s flood turns widely over the whale’s home, [over] the surface of the earth, [and] comes back to me, gluttonous and greedy; the lone-flyer cries, whets my heart irresistibly onto the whale’s road, over the expanse of the waves. Therefore, for me the joys of the Lord are hotter than this dead life, fleeting on land.)
And of all the passions, anger is often thought to run the hottest. There is this passage from Beowulf that uses hot both figuratively and literally. Here, the dragon has just discovered that a cup has been stolen from its hoard and the word simultaneously describes both the dragon’s wrath and its breath:
Hord-weard sohte
georne æfter grunde, wolde guman findan,
þone þe him on sweofote sare geteode;
hat ond hreoh-mod hlæw oft ymbehwearf
ealne utanweardne; ne ðær ænig mon
on þam westenne— hwæðre wiges gefeh,
beadwe weorces.
(The hoard-keeper zealously sought over the ground, wanting to find the man who had caused him harm in his sleep; hot and enraged he often circled all around the outside of the barrow; there was no one in that wasteland—but he desired conflict, the action of battle.)
Hot is also used to describe spicy food, and this sense is a bit later, appearing in the Middle English period. John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, written at the end of the fourteenth century, uses it this way in a passage about Nebuchadnezzar II, whom God changed into a beast as a punishment, at least according to Daniel 4:31–33 that is:
Thurgh his pouer dede him transforme
Fro man into a bestes forme;
And lich an Oxe under the fot
He graseth, as he nedes mot,
To geten him his lives fode.
Tho thoghte him colde grases goode,
That whilom eet the hote spices,
Thus was he torned fro delices.
(Through his power [God] transformed him from a man into a beast’s form; and like an ox he grazes under foot as he needs to get himself his food. Though he thought cold grasses good, where once he ate hot spices, thus he was turned from delights.)
Hot has also long been associated with sexual desire, and this sense also appears in Middle English. Here is Chaucer’s description of the summoner from the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales:
A somonour was ther with us in that place,
That hadde a fyr-reed cherubynnes face,
For saucefleem he was, with eyen narwe.
As hoot he was and lecherous as a sparwe,
With scalled browes blake and piled berd.
Of his visage children were aferd.
(A summoner was there with us in that place,
That had a fire-red cherubim’s face,
For he was pimpled he was, with eyes narrow,
He was as hot and lecherous as a sparrow,
With black, scabby brows and mangy beard,
Of his visage, children were afeared.)
The summoner may have had a hot libido, but he was anything but hot himself. And the use of hot to refer to people who were sexually attractive, as opposed to being lustful, or to things that were lewd or obscene would take a surprisingly long time to appear, not until the latter half of the nineteenth century to be specific. Here is a passage from the 19 June 1878 issue of Punch, a “letter” written by ’Arry, a Cockney creation of humorist Edwin James Milliken that uses hot in the lewd sense:
The prog and the lotion was lummy, the chaff and the spoonin’ was prime,
The jokes jest as ’ot as they make ’em, and Loo was one larf all the time.
Her cheeks did go pinkish at fust, but lor bless yer, that quickly goes off,
And the world ain’t pertikler yer know if yer does the ’ole thing like a toff.
To be sexual is one thing; to be wanted by the police is quite another. That sense of hot also dates to the nineteenth century. Here is the definition of hot from George Matsell’s 1859 glossary of criminal slang:
HOT. Too well known. “The cove had better move his beaters to Dewsville, it is too hot for him here; if he stops, he’ll be sure to be sick for twenty stretches,” the fellow had better go into the country, for if he stays, he will be sent to prison for twenty years.
And criminals were not the only thing that could be hot. Stolen property could be also. From the Illustrated Times of 11 January 1862:
Slung around his waist and hidden by the lappets of his coat are half-a-dozen flashy squares of Brummagem-like fabric, the wholesale price of which is about sixpence each. Whenever this dodger sees a “party” whom by his appearance he judges to be rogue or fool enough for his purpose, he just touches him on the shoulder to attract his attention, and then, quick as lightning, lifts a corner of his skirt, and exposes the supposed-to-be stolen goods. If the green one bites, and asks in a whisper “How much?” the dodger whips one off the string, and rapidly ejaculates “Two bob; it’s the best of the lot, but the hottest, so I wants to drop it;” which means that in consideration of its being the last stolen, and consequently the most likely to get the holder into trouble, it shall be sold at the low price of two shillings. If the guilty goose gives but half the sum asked, the dodger comes off with a swinging profit.
Finally, hot can also mean popular or trendy. That sense too is from the nineteenth century. From Hume Nisbet’s novel The Bushranger’s Sweetheart:
“That paper of yours is beginning to make a bit of excitement in the financial world,” observed the miner.
“Ah, you bet on that. We’re hot, and already have scored some points and bagged a few dimes; but hold on a bit, we’re only beginning with our muckrake.”
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