hotshot
/ˈhɒtˌʃɒt/
hotshot adjective: highly skilled.
Adjective
hotshot (comparative more hotshot, superlative most hotshot)
- Highly skilled.
- He was a hotshot lawyer, with an astounding win-loss record.
- Displaying talent.
- Keep up those hotshot baskets, and the scouts are sure to take notice.
Noun
hotshot (plural hotshots)
- Someone with exceptional skills in a certain field.
- 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.”2021 March 20, Maureen Dowd, “Old Pol, New Tricks”, in The New York Times
- A type of firefighter highly skilled in wildfire firefighting without external support, using basic tools that are backpacked in and manhandled about.
- A portable device that is used to jump-start an automobile battery, or the electrical output of such a device.
- 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.
- 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
- 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
Verb
hotshot (third-person singular simple present hotshots, present participle hotshotting, simple past and past participle hotshotted)
Synonyms of hotshot
Forms of hotshot
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more hotshot |
| superlative | most hotshot |
| alternative form | hot shot |
| alternative form | hot-shot |
| Noun | |
| plural | hotshots |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | hotshots |
| present participle | hotshotting |
| past participle | hotshotted |
| past | hotshotted |
Origin of hotshot
From hot + shot.
Questions about hotshot
- What does hotshot mean?
- Hotshot means highly skilled.
- What part of speech is hotshot?
- Hotshot can be an adjective, a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce hotshot?
- Hotshot is pronounced /ˈhɒtˌʃɒt/.
Words near hotshot in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-hotshot.ogg.
Cite this entry: “hotshot.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hotshot. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.