A dictionary of Confusable Phrases: More Than 10,000 Idioms and Collocations

hot line • hot wire
hot line —
1
. direct line of communication between heads
of governments: President Richard Nixon also used the hot
line during tensions between India and Pakistan in 
1
97
1
. 2. a
direct telephone communication channel; an emergency tele-
phone counseling service: Your relatives are welcome to use
our hot line to learn about the patients’ state. Cf.: warm line—
telephone service designed to solve relatively minor problems:
Organizers call it a “warm line” instead of a hot line because
it’s a place where teens call long before it’s a life-or-death sit-
uation.
hot wire —part of electrical instruments whose resistance
changes with changing temperature: The turbulence data were
measured inside the jet stream by the use of hot wire equip-
ment.
Note: 
The expression does not correlate in meaning with the
verbal phrase hot wire— start a car without a key: Lefty hot
wired the car and used it for an hour or two.
hot seat • hot seating
hot seat—
1
. (coll., also: hot chair) an uncomfortable position
of authority where one has to make difficult decisions: I am
now sitting in this hot seat as a film critic whose job it is to
analyze a film. 2. (Air Force) an ejection seat in an aircraft:
McClane was able to press the ejection switch of a hot seat
just in time to escape from an exploding plane. 3. (sl., also:
hot chair) the electric chair: A newspaper reporter said he heard
the lad announce that he was not afraid to die “in the hot
seat.”
hot seating —
1
. sharing of desks or equipment by office shift
workers, etc.: In these schools, double shifts, known as “hot-
seating,” are the norm. 2. (role-playing technique) pretending
to be a literary character and answering the relevant questions
in the “hot seat”: Hot seating is a way of finding out more
about the characters in stories, plays, or poems.