hot-wire
hot-wire verb: to wire, especially to a power supply, using a makeshift electrical connection.
Verb
hot-wire (third-person singular simple present hot-wires, present participle hot-wiring, simple past and past participle hot-wired)
- To wire, especially to a power supply, using a makeshift electrical connection.
- I bypassed the switch and hot-wired the circuit board to the power supply.
- In particular, to start (an automobile engine) by bypassing the ignition key wiring, especially in order to steal the vehicle.
- Never broke into a car, never hotwired a car. Never broke into a truck. 'I shall not cause harm to any vehicle nor the personal contents thereof, nor through inaction let the personal contents thereof come to harm' It's what I call the Repo Code, kid!1984, Alex Cox, Repo Man, spoken by Bud (Harry Dean Stanton)
- His attitude grew worse and his crimes escalated: he broke into garages in his neighborhood, he hot-wired cars, and his punches grew harder.2021, Zara Stone, Killer Looks: The Forgotten History of Plastic Surgery in Prisons, Rowman & Littlefield, →ISBN, page 148
Forms of hot-wire
| third-person singular present | hot-wires |
|---|---|
| present participle | hot-wiring |
| past participle | hot-wired |
| past | hot-wired |
| alternative form | hotwire |
Origin of hot-wire
From hot + wire, with hot referring to electrical current.
Questions about hot-wire
- What does hot-wire mean?
- Hot-wire means to wire, especially to a power supply, using a makeshift electrical connection.
- What part of speech is hot-wire?
- Hot-wire is a verb.
- What is the past tense of hot-wire?
- The past tense of hot-wire is hot-wired.
Words near hot-wire in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hot-wire (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-hot-wire.ogg.
Cite this entry: “hot-wire.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hot-wire. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.