Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a foot.

1789		G. Parker Life’s Painter 167: Feet. Heaters – if his shoes are broke and his feet seen through them, you’ll hear one say to the other, twig his heaters out of their box-irons; box-irons being cant for shoes.
c.1821		note in Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (c.1786) ms. additions n.p.: Heaters. Feet (Flash).

2. (US) an overcoat.

1913		Sat. Eve. Post 15 Mar. 10: He had a brown heater and a stiff lid and patent-leather gums [HDAS].
1929		A.J. Barr Let Tomorrow Come 149: What’re you supposed to do with the fin – buy a new front and a new heater?
1935		A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks.
1953		S. Bellow Augie March (1996) 307: His snappy man-about-town suit and his Baltimore heater.

3. (US) a cigar.

1918		T.A. Dorgan in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 44: He’ll never quit — He can smoke anything a tall [sic] — Say some of the heaters that he mooches would kill a horse.
1938		D. Runyon ‘For a Pal’ Runyon on Broadway (1954) 574: Blind Benny is smoking a big heater.
1958		A. King Mine Enemy Grows Older (1959) 75: He [...] shoved an eight-inch heater into his mouth.

4. (also heatrola) a pistol, a revolver; a weapon (see cite 1941).

1930		D. Hammett Maltese Falcon (1965) 415: The boy advanced from the doorway [...] The pistol in his hand still hung at his side [...] He said to Spade in a voice cramped by passion: ‘You bastard, get up on your feet and go for your heater!’.
1936		R. Chandler ‘Goldfish’ Red Wind (1946) 187: Shed the heater.
1941		D. Burley N.Y. Amsterdam Star-News 21 June 13: The Square didn’t cop the first plea about lettin’ you and me turn loose with the heavy heaters.
1949		W.R. Burnett Asphalt Jungle in Four Novels (1984) 203: You better take the heater.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 15: heatrola A revolver or pistol.
1959		C. Himes Crazy Kill 115: Johnny’s laying in there in the dark with his heater.
1969		‘Iceberg Slim’ Mama Black Widow 70: I [...] took the heater.
1970		‘Red’ Rudensky Gonif 12: I had drawn a fifteen year sentence [...] for accidentally shooting a Negro to death in a gory tavern fight. He had tried to take my heater away.
1981		J. Ellroy Brown’s Requiem 239: He kept glancing furtively at my left armpit, no doubt trying to determine whether or not I was carrying a heater.
1991		(con. 1920s) O.D. Brooks Legs 77: One of them whipped out a nickel-plated heater [...] and pistol-whipped the poor bastard.
1996		A. Close Official and Doubtful 316: Callum Macleod doesn’t strike me as the type to look a gift heater in the mouth.
2002		T. Dorsey Triggerfish Twist (2002) 270: ‘He pulled out his piece.’ ‘You mean his rod?’ ‘No, his heater.’.
2012		G. Pelecanos (con. 1972) What It Was 42: Jones was [...] using an oiled cloth to polish one of the two .45s he owned [...] ‘Where you about to go with that heater?’ said Coco.
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 14: I hid my heater in a shoulder rig.

5. (US) the female genitals.

1935		A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks n.p.: Peeping the heater, a lewd act.
1973		Maurer & Vogel Narcotics and Narcotic Addiction in Maurer Lang. Und. (1981).

6. (US campus) an exceptionally attractive man.

1993

Eble Campus Sl. Apr.