Word.ws English Dictionary

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)

  1. (informal, transitive) 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.
  2. (informal, transitive) 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 presenthotwires
present participlehotwiring
past participlehotwired
pasthotwired

Questions about hotwire

What is hotwire the alternative spelling of?
Hotwire is the alternative spelling of hot-wire.

Words near hotwire in the dictionary

  1. Hotwells
  2. hotwife
  3. hotwifed
  4. hotwifes
  5. hotwifing
  6. hotwire
  7. hotwired
  8. hotwires
  9. hotwiring
  10. hotwives
  11. hotword

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.

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