Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To start the engine of (a car, for example) without a key, as by short-circuiting the ignition system.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb to start (a car) by using a wire instead of a key, as when stealing the car; the wire is connected to points in the ignition circuit that bypass the key.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb slang To start an automobile engine by bypassing the ignition key wiring
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb start (a car engine) without a key by bypassing the ignition interlock
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Growing vegetables is useful; but so is learning how to shoot a gun, hot-wire a car, and manipulate our way into a bomb shelter.
Peg Aloi: Tough Gals: Do They Still Exist? Peg Aloi 2011
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Growing vegetables is useful; but so is learning how to shoot a gun, hot-wire a car, and manipulate our way into a bomb shelter.
Peg Aloi: Tough Gals: Do They Still Exist? Peg Aloi 2011
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Heavy traffic can make it difficult to hear his dogs, and during our first day in the field someone tried to hot-wire an ATV Bolen had left at the truck.
The Boar War 2009
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Heavy traffic can make it difficult to hear his dogs, and during our first day in the field someone tried to hot-wire an ATV Bolen had left at the truck.
The Boar War 2009
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An ambitious, multibillion-dollar project to hot-wire the new Southwest border fence with high-tech radar, cameras and satellite signals has been plagued with serious system failures and repeated delays and will probably not be completed for another seven years — if it is finished at all.
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I learned how to pick locks, how to hot-wire cars.
AMERICAN SUBVERSIVE DAVID GOODWILLIE 2010
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The list of equipment is pretty extensive, too, and new items are arriving frequently (like a new hot-wire foam cutter).
Boing Boing 2008
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Her dad had taught her a lot about old trucks, like how to hot-wire the ignition.
SILENT TRUTH SHERRILYN KENYON 2010
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It takes him eighteen seconds to jimmy the door, another thirty to hot-wire it “fruits of a misspent youth”, and he drives it away and hides it in a strip mall parking lot in SJC, where Ben picks him up.
Savages Don Winslow 2010
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Her dad had taught her a lot about old trucks, like how to hot-wire the ignition.
SILENT TRUTH SHERRILYN KENYON 2010
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