hotshot
/ˈhɒtˌʃɒt/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.68 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A type of firefighter highly skilled in wildfire firefighting without external support, using basic tools that are backpacked in and manhandled about.
noun
A portable device that is used to jump-start an automobile battery, or the electrical output of such a device.
American usage
noun
A lethal injection of heroin or another opiate.
Example Sentences
- "He was a hotshot lawyer, with an astounding win-loss record."
- "Keep up those hotshot baskets, and the scouts are sure to take notice."
- "She sure was a hotshot on the keyboard, 93 words per minute!"
- "Heading into 2016 and 2020, if you told the hotshots from Obamaworld that you thought Biden would be a good candidate, they would uniformly offer a look of infinite patience, tolerance and condescension and say something like, “Well, I could understand how someone would think that.”"
- "Indeed, development proceeded so rapidly thereafter that Mopac, for instance, was rebuilding a series of 10-year-old Woodard 2-8-4's into 4-8-4's by 1940 - not because they couldn't steam but because their 63-inch drivers couldn't roll the hotshots fast enough."
- "I sniffed glue, transmission fluid, gasoline, whatever drug anybody gave me, I took. […] [Y]ears ago, I was in a drug rehabilitation program and found out that my brother was killed after somebody gave him a hotshot, drugs laced with poison."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *keHy- Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁- Proto-Indo-European *-eti Proto-Indo-European *-dʰh₁eti Proto-Indo-European *-dʰeti Proto-Indo-European *kéHidʰeti Proto-Indo-European *kéHidos Proto-Germanic *haitaz Proto-West Germanic *hait Old English hāt Middle English hot English hot English shot English hotshot From hot + shot.
Usage
- Informal
- American usage
- Slang
- Transitive verb
Inflected Forms
more hotshot (comparative)
most hotshot (superlative)
hot shot (alternative)
hot-shot (alternative)
hotshots (plural)
hotshots (present, singular)
hotshotting (participle, present)
hotshotted (participle, past)
hotshotted (past)