red-hot

• red hot, redhot

• Rhymes: -ɒt

red-hot (comparative more red-hot, superlative most red-hot)

1. Heated to the point that it glows with a visible red color.

   The smith's apprentice was still wary of manipulating the red-hot metal.

   • 1843 December 19, Charles Dickens, “Stave Three. The Second of the Three Spirits.”, in A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, London: Chapman & Hall, […], →OCLC, page 77:

     Heaped up upon the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chesnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam.

   • 1845, Edgar Allan Poe, The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade:

     Among this nation of necromancers there was also one who had in his veins the blood of the salamanders; for he made no scruple of sitting down to smoke his chibouc in a red-hot oven until his dinner was thoroughly roasted upon its floor.

   • 1865 November (indicated as 1866), Lewis Carroll [pseudonym; Charles Lutwidge Dodgson], “Down the Rabbit-Hole”, in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, London: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, page 10:

     [A] red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; […]

   • 1898 September, Joseph Conrad, “Youth: a Narrative”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXIV, number DCCCCXCV, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publication Co., page 325, column 1:

     The cat-heads had burned away, and the two red-hot anchors had gone to the bottom, tearing out after them two hundred fathom of red-hot chain.

2. (hyperbolic) Very hot.

   That curry was red-hot.

3. Emotionally charged, especially with anger or enthusiasm.

   He really delivered a red-hot speech today.

4. Having a very strong sexual appeal.

   Did you see that red-hot picture of Liv Tyler in today's paper?

5. Very fresh, exciting, and up-to-date.

   Tune in at ten to catch this red-hot story!

   • 2021 September 1, Taylor Lorenz, “She’s the Investor Guru for Online Creators”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     She sits at the intersection of start-up investing and the fast-growing ecosystem of online creators, both of which are red hot.

• firehot
• red heat

red-hot (plural red-hots)

1. (dated, US) Alternative spelling of red hot

• white-hot

• dehort