Word.ws English Dictionary

hot-shot

hot-shot is the alternative spelling of hotshot.

Meaning of hotshot

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!
  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) A portable device that is used to jump-start an automobile battery, or the electrical output of such a device.
  4. (US) A fast freight train.
    • 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.1959, David P. Morgan, editor, Steam's Finest Hour, Kalmbach Publishing Co.
  5. (slang) A dose of recreational drugs deliberately laced with poison.
    • 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.1997, Andi Rierden, The Farm: Life inside a women's prison, page 120
  6. A lethal injection of heroin or another opiate.
    • “You guys are being babies.” “Babies.” “Oh, we're being babies, Mac? Why don't you go work for your dad all day?” “My dad's a meth dealer.” “[Mock Crying] Oh, oh, no! My daddy's in prison!” “My daddy used to give hot shots to prostitutes. Feel sorry for me!”2006 July 6, Charlie Day & Glenn Howerton & Rob McElhenney, “Dennis and Dee Go on Welfare” (0:21 from the start), in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, season 2, episode 3, spoken by Dennis Reynolds...
    Synonyms:
    hot dose

See all 9 meanings of hotshot

Forms of hot-shot

pluralhot-shots

Questions about hot-shot

What is hot-shot the alternative spelling of?
Hot-shot is the alternative spelling of hotshot.

Words near hot-shot in the dictionary

  1. hot-rodder
  2. hot-rodding
  3. hot-sheet motel
  4. hot-sheet motels
  5. hot-short
  6. hot-shot
  7. hot-skull
  8. hot-skulls
  9. hot-spirited
  10. hot-stage
  11. hot-staged

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hot-shot (page history and authors); hotshot (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “hot-shot.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hot-shot. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.