hotwire
hotwire is the alternative spelling of hot-wire.
Meaning of hot-wire
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)
Forms of hotwire
| third-person singular present | hotwires |
|---|---|
| present participle | hotwiring |
| past participle | hotwired |
| past | hotwired |
Questions about hotwire
- What is hotwire the alternative spelling of?
- Hotwire is the alternative spelling of hot-wire.
Words near hotwire in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hotwire (page history and authors); 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:
Cite this entry: “hotwire.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hotwire. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
