hot, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

hot n.

[George Parker, Life’s Painter (1789): ‘a mixed kind of liquor, of beer and gin, with egg, sugar and nutmeg, drank mostly in night-houses, but when drank in a morning, it is called flannel’]

1. beer mixed with gin, plus egg and spices.

1789		G. Parker Life’s Painter 135: Padding jack and diving Ned [...] Have made me drunk with hot, and stood / The racket for a dram.
1821		‘An Amateur’ Real Life in London II 324: The landlord; who declared it was as prime a pot of hot as he had made for the last fortnight.
1832		Satirist (London) 6 May 147/1: So we pikes it away for The Chequers, / And calls for the landlord with glee / And laid out in Hot for the Madams.
1846		Censor (London) 25 Jan. 3/2: Soon Bradbury a chaplain got, / Who told them all to shun the pot. / And not at Beeton’s to quaff their hot.
1905		‘It’s Only a Way He’s Got’ in ‘Banjo’ Paterson Old Bush Songs 84: Says she, ‘The night is very cold, / Pray, stand a drop of Hot’.

2. (US) a hot meal; thus collar a hot v., to eat a meal.

1902		T.A. Dorgan in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 46: {Man calling out order in restaurant kitchen:} How’s them hots comin.
1926		(con. 1918) J.W. Thomason Fix Bayonets! 121: That’s what I got against this fighting stuff — it breaks into your three hots a day.
1942		Z.N. Hurston ‘Story in Harlem Sl.’ in Novels and Stories (1995) 1002: You got to get out on the beat and collar yourself a hot.
1947		M.H. Boulware Jive and Sl. n.p.: Collar a Hot ... Eating a meal.
1977		L. Heinemann Close Quarters (1987) 286: Real beds. Sheets once a week. Three hots a day.
1985		(con. 1969–70) D. Bodey F.N.G. (1988) 98: A couple of times a week the Rear sends us hots, flood prepared and delivered in canisters.

3. (US) sexual intercourse [hot adj. (1a)].

1916

H.N. Cary Sl. of Venery.

4. see hot property under hot adj.

In compounds

hot with (n.)

hot spirits and water with sugar, thus hot without, lacking sugar (cf. cold without under cold n.).

1837		‘The Execution’ in Bentley’s Misc. June 562: There is ‘punch,’ ‘cold without,’ ‘hot with,’ ‘heavy wet’.
1838		R.S. Surtees Jorrocks Jaunts (1874) 244: He said [...] he would stand two glasses of ‘cold without’ if I would. ‘Hot with,’ said I, ‘and I’ll do it’.
1849		C. Kingsley Alton Locke (1850) 58: Send me up a go of hot with, and I’ll sit up with him.
1855		Delhi Sketch Bk 1 Feb. 21/2: [A] thimbleful of hot without, which means two inches of brandy.
1856		C. Reade It Is Never Too Late to Mend III 289: ‘Hot with,’ demanded the waiter [...] She poured first the brandy then the hot water into a tumbler.
1863		T. Taylor Ticket-Of-Leave Man Act I: Three hots with —.
1873		‘Cuthbert Bede’ Little Mr. Bouncer 66: ‘What did you mean [...] by saying that you gave the wet men callidum-cum and had frigidum sine yourselves?’ ‘It’s the short for hot-with and cold-without’.

In phrases

on the hot

(UK Und.) up to no good, engaged in crime.

1833

‘The Trotting Horse’ in Convivialist in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) IV 17: Up comes some saucy kiddy, a scamp pon the hot, / But when he pulls the trigger, why I’m off just like a shot.

three hots and a cot (n.)

(US) three meals a day plus a bed for the night, often used as a rate of payment; cite 2020 refers to prison.

1958		Commentary n.d. 230/1: Some characteristics pertinent to the creation of this fantasyland are [...] three daily meals and a bed (three hots and a cot),.
1969		N.Y. Times 28 Sept. 51: For a day’s work, each youth is paid 50 cents plus earning his room and board, or ‘three hots and a cot,’ as one youth described it.
1977		(con. 1949) J.G. Dunne True Confessions (1979) 261: Knew a fellow once, had a bleeding ulcer, wanted to keep me around. Hundred a week, three hots and a cot, and a shot at the nigger maid.
1989		W. Kotzwinkle Midnight Examiner (1990) 135: If only the bastards would accept me, my old age would be assured. [...] Three hots and a cot, my own little cell, and Gregorian chants.
1990		(con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 4: Stoop labor for three hots and a cot.
2005		G. Pelecanos Drama City 172: Least I had some privacy in the cut. Three-hots-and-a-cot is lookin’ pretty good right now.
2008		G. Pelecanos Way Home (2009) 87: I’m not talkin about that three-hots-and-a-cot bullshit you hear all the time.
2020		S.A. Crosby Blacktop Wasteland 77: ‘I ain’t trying to wake up to three hots and a cot because you gonna ball up like a baby when the work goes down’’.
2024		Twitter/X 3 Oct. 🌐 Three hots and a cot is a welfare benefit - not punishment.