Meaning & use
hot wire
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Meaning
verbtransitiveinformal
To start a car engine without a key by connecting the ignition wires directly, usually in order to steal the vehicle.
Grammar: Takes an object: hot-wire a car. Often used in the passive: the car was hot-wired.
Patterns
- hot-wire a car
- hot-wire an engine
- be hot-wired
The thieves hot-wired the van and drove it away in less than a minute.
He learned how to hot-wire a car from watching old movies.
The stolen truck was later found hot-wired and abandoned.
Word forms
| third person singular | hot-wires |
|---|---|
| past tense | hot-wired |
| past participle | hot-wired |
| present participle | hot-wiring |
Common combinations
- hot-wire a car
- They hot-wired a car and fled the scene.
- hot-wire an engine
- He hot-wired the engine and sped off.
- be hot-wired
- The vehicle was hot-wired and left in a parking lot.
- learn to hot-wire
- She learned to hot-wire from a friend.
- hot-wire a vehicle
- The gang hot-wired a vehicle to escape.
Synonyms and how they differ
- jump-start
- Jump-start means to start a car with a dead battery using cables from another vehicle, not by bypassing the ignition.
- steal
- Steal is the general verb for taking something without permission; hot-wire specifically refers to the method of starting a car without a key.
Word family
- hot-wiring noun
- The act of starting a car without a key by connecting ignition wires.
- hot-wired adjective
- Describing a car that has been started by bypassing the ignition.
Commonly confused: hot wire or hot wire?
hot wire vs hot wire
As a noun phrase, 'hot wire' means a wire carrying electric current or a live wire, not the act of stealing a car.
Practice
The thieves managed to _____ the car and escape before the police arrived.
Choose one answer.
After 'managed to' we need the base form of the verb, so 'hot-wire' is correct. 'Hot-wired' is past tense, 'hot-wiring' is -ing form, and 'hot-wires' is third person singular, none of which fit after 'to'.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “hot wire”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.