Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. something or someone considered first-rate, excellent, especially intelligent or capable.

1759		‘Hot Stuff’ in Silber Songs of Independence (1973) 146: ‘If you please, Madam Abbess, a word with your nuns!’ / Each soldier shall enter the convent in buff, / And then, never fear, we will give them Hot Stuff!
1869		Queenslander (Brisbane) 16 Oct. 12/6: The course pursued was to run his friend’s horses down as not likely to win [...] and to crack up the stranger’s as ‘hot goods’.
1884		C.F. Lummis letter 10 Oct. in Byrkit Letters from the Southwest (1989) 22: I will tell you [...] about the cowboys I saw at Junction City, Abilene and Salina. They are ‘hot stuff’.
1896		W.C. Gore Student Sl. in Cohen (1997) ) 20: hot-stuff. Same as hot-dish. ‘How do you like your new instructor?’ ‘He’s hot-stuff.’.
1906		Marvel 13 Oct. 327: Goal, by George! That youngster’s hot stuff!
1916		T. Burke Limehouse Nights 191: ‘That youngster of mine,’ he would say, ‘is hot stuff. She don’t half get on [...] Y’ought to hear her play.’.
1925		Wodehouse Carry on, Jeeves 87: He rather thinks he would be hot stuff among the hens.
1926		Weston & Lee [perf. Bromley Carter] ‘Bachelor Ben’ 🎵 When I was eighteen, I was ‘Hot Stuff’... I was. / In those days I ran after every young lass.
1927		Smith’s Wkly (Sydney) 20 Aug. 11/2: Slanguage [...] Cross out the incorrect: word or phrase in the following sentences: [...] ‘Solomon was ’ot stuff (a doer) with the tabbies (tarts) and a fair cow (a whale) on the shicker (’ops)’.
1935		Ted Yates This Is New York 26 Apr. [synd. col.] From the reports [...] Lewis is ‘hot stuff’.
1937		R. Westerby Wide Boys Never Work (1938) 79: Damned hot stuff [...] Only had one owner, and he had it chauffeur-kept.
1947		S. Lewis Kingsblood Royal (2001) 315: It’s a nice-looking young man, some kind of soldier, in what I think is an American Legion uniform. Hot stuff.
1951		J.D. Salinger Catcher in the Rye (1958) 141: It was the only dive he could do, but he thought he was very hot stuff.
1952		C. Brossard Redemption in G. Feldman (ed.) Protest (1960) 117: You really think you’re hot stuff, don’t you?
1959		H.E. Bates A Breath of French Air (1985) 205: Absolutely delectable. Hot stuff.
1965		D. Pearce Cool Hand Luke (1967) 105: The colonel he heard about how I could pick a banjo, and he figures that’s pretty hot stuff.
1974		‘P.B. Yuill’ Hazell Plays Solomon (1976) 30: That report of yours must have been hot stuff.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 352: hot shit. Hot shot, hot stuff; often ironic, comparable to hot dog. Also an exclamation of amazement and appreciation.
1997–2001		Online Sl. Dict. 🌐 hot stuff adj 1. skilled at something. Sometimes used sarcastically when someone is showing off. (‘That basketball player is hot stuff.’).
2011		‘Jack Tunney’ Split Decision [ebook] The young gun he put in to spar with me must have thought he was hot stuff.
2015		T. Pluck ‘Moody Joe Shaw’ in Life During Wartime (2018) 253: ‘I went to all his gigs. He was hot stuff’.

2. in attrib. use of sense 1.

1904		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 1 June 6/1: Mac puts up a hot-stuff fight.
1919		Sun. Times (Perth) 14 Sept. 25/4: Half the neighbourhood get to know all the hot-stuff pubs they have pulled up at.
1925		Smith’s Wkly (Sydney) 19 Dec. 3/1: He is the hot-stuff urger.

3. an attractive woman.

1899		A. Binstead Houndsditch Day by Day 67: There you are, me lads, wha’ do ye think of ’er, eh? Ain’t she a real bit of ’ot stuff?
1928		C. McKay Home to Harlem 215: She was hot stuff all right.
1939		H. Miller Tropic of Capricorn (1964) 73: She’s hot stuff.
1944		J.T. Farrell ‘Patsy Gilbride’ in To Whom It May Concern 51: In that picture, Johnny, I made the nation think that Cynthia was hot stuff. I made her seem hot.
1959		W. Brown Teen-Age Mafia 74: The guy was [...] sure that he had the inside track to some hot stuff.
1964		H.S. Thompson letter 28 Apr. in Proud Highway (1997) 452: He has a new New York nymphet who is nice but not real hot stuff.
1978		R. Caron Go-Boy! ‘Hot stuff?’ ‘Nothing to write home about.’.
1997–2001		Online Sl. Dict. 🌐 hot stuff adj [...] 2. attractive. (‘The kid is hot stuff!’).

4. (Aus.) hard fighting, aggression.

1904

Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 23 Mar. 6/3: Forrest, after taking an awful hiding, and giving back some hot stuff, quit at the end of the seventh.

5. something or someone pornographic or sexy; salacious; amoral also attrib.

1904		Sun. Times (Perth) 27 Mar. 6/1: The lot could write a book of their pasts, which would be real ‘hot stuff’.
1910		Sun. Times (Perth) 12 June 2nd sect. 9/1: They Say [...] That the bio man threatens to show no more tasty-tart films [...] That private views of Parisian hot stuff happenings won’t even be seen through smoked glasses.
1911		Harrington & Powell [perf. Marie Lloyd] Put On Your Slippers 🎵 Now Bertie was a bounder - yes - and regular hot stuff too.
1913		Day Book (Chicago) 4 Nov. 27/1: No more will hot-stuff, ‘raggy’ songs / Be the curse of the musical art.
1914		Joyce ‘A Little Cloud’ Dubliners (1956) 74: I’ve been to the Moulin Rouge [...] and I’ve been to all the Bohemian cafes. Hot stuff! Not for a pious chap like you, Tommy.
1921		Western Dly Press 11 May 9/2: [of language] Hot Stuff. Asked if a woman lodger’s language was very bad, a Shoreditch landlord said: ‘Bad! If it floats down two floors to me it must be pretty hot’.
1929		W.R. Burnett Little Caesar (1932) 24: You think I don’t know about that little red-head. Hot stuff, Tony, my boy.
1932		(con. 1919) Dos Passos Nineteen Nineteen in USA (1966) 380: The girls were hot stuff but they were scared.
1943		in G. Legman Limerick (1953) 89: Old Louis Quatorze was hot stuff. / He tired of that game, blindman’s buff, / Up-ended his mistress, / Kissed hers while she kissed his, / And thus taught the world soixante-neuf.
1958		R. Wright Long Dream 153: The boys at school had whispered that she was ‘hot stuff’.
1961		T. Taylor Baron’s Court All Change (2011) 94: ‘Hot sutff from Paris’ splashed across trheir paper hats.
1963		(con. 1944) L. Glassop Rats in New Guinea 202: What a night, old man! Boy, was she hot stuff!
1969		A. Fugard Boesman and Lena Act II: Is he hot stuff? Keeping you warm there?
1978		L. Kramer Faggots 150: The hot stuff’s in the master bedroom.
1989		T. Blacker Fixx 206: My information is that there’s more to come. And that it’s pretty hot stuff.
2002		Mad mag. Sept. 22: Let’s go, hot stuff!

6. attrib. use of sense 4.

1929		S. Ornitz Haunch Paunch and Jowl 108: And you’ll sing a hot-stuff song – a parody on a pop-oolar song – of what happened to an innercent gal in a wicked town.
1935		(con. late 1920s) L. Hughes Little Ham Act I: I’m gonna buy my gal a hot stuff dress.

7. (US) stolen goods.

1924		G. Henderson Keys to Crookdom 117: Pawnshops and second-hand stores establish a reputation for handling ‘hot stuff’.
1933		‘Goat’ Laven Rough Stuff 114: The fences all give you the same old story, that ‘it’s hot stuff’, in other words that the police are on the watch for it.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 103/2: Hot stuff. 1. Stolen, illegal, or contraband goods.
1964		P. Highsmith Two Faces of January (1988) 17: You couldn’t get rid of the hot stuff to him?
1979		W.D. Myers The Young Landlords 94: A.B. used to sell stuff. He said it was all hot stuff, but I don’t think anybody could steal that much.

8. (UK Und.) fraudulent literature used in financial swindling.

1935

Sun (N.Y.) 19 Feb. 28/2: ‘Hot stuff’ is the literature effective in selling.

9. extremely well-dressed.

1953

S. Bellow Augie March (1996) 126: He [...] was not just natty but hot stuff, in a double-breasted striped suit.