hotshot

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English

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Alternative forms

Etymology

From hot +‎ shot.

Pronunciation

Adjective

hotshot (comparative more hotshot, superlative most hotshot)

  1. (informal) Highly skilled.
    He was a hotshot lawyer, with an astounding win-loss record.
  2. (informal) Displaying talent.
    Keep up those hotshot baskets, and the scouts are sure to take notice.

Translations

Noun

hotshot (plural hotshots)

  1. (informal) Someone with exceptional skills in a certain field.
    She sure was a hotshot on the keyboard, 93 words per minute!
    • 2021 March 20, Maureen Dowd, “Old Pol, New Tricks”, in The New York Times:
      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.”
  2. A type of firefighter highly skilled in wildfire firefighting without external support, using basic tools that are backpacked in and manhandled about.
  3. (US, rail transport) A fast freight train.
    • 1959, David P. Morgan, editor, Steam's Finest Hour, Kalmbach Publishing Co.:
      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.
  4. (slang) A dose of recreational drugs deliberately laced with poison.
    • 1997, Andi Rierden, The Farm: Life inside a women's prison, page 120:
      I sniffed glue, transmission fluid, gasoline, whatever drug anybody gave me, I took. [] 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.

Coordinate terms

Translations

Verb

hotshot (third-person singular simple present hotshots, present participle hotshotting, simple past and past participle hotshotted)

  1. (transitive, slang) To give (somebody) a dose of recreational drugs deliberately laced with poison.

See also

Further reading