hot-blooded

• hotblooded

hot-blooded (comparative more hot-blooded or hotter-blooded, superlative most hot-blooded or hottest-blooded)

1. Easily angered or excited.
   • 1941, Norman Leys, “European Taxation and Related Matters”, in The Colour Bar in East Africa, London: The Hogarth Press […], page 86:

     So much stronger and hotter-blooded than the motive of gain is that other motive, that we call racial arrogance and lust of domination when displayed in Europe, but describe more indulgently when our countrymen act upon it in Africa.

   • 1972, Caroline Gordon, The Glory of Hera, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., →LCCN, page 215:

     Amphitryon said finally: “Creon says that he was the unwitting cause of Menoeceus’ death. I had this from Heniocha, in whom he confided his secret.” / “How could that be?” Heracles asked. / “Creon was then about the same age that you are now, and hot-blooded. At least, hotter-blooded than he is now.”

2. Having strong sexual urges; easily aroused.

   Synonyms: lustful, passionate, excitable

   • 1976, Patrick Skene Catling, Bliss Incorporated, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, →ISBN, page 48:

     Anyway, Vincent admired the monks for their apparently cheerful stoicism; and, in an abstract, theoretical fashion, he envied them, even as he almost immediately instinctively realized that he could never become one of them. Or could he? Many of the monks, quite obviously, were younger and presumably hotter-blooded than he. / The basic difficulty, the possibly insuperable impediment, as in some other artificially contrived bizarrely heroic situations, Vincent decided, was sex – or, to be exact, no sex.

   • 1983, James [Archibald] Houston, “Pot Latch”, in Eagle Song: An Indian Saga Based on True Events, San Diego, Calif., New York, N.Y.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, →ISBN, page 129:

     The copper widow was the most hot-blooded woman I have ever known. She openly rejected all our women. She would scarcely speak to them. She lived only for our men. She talked easily and intelligently with them or rubbed up against them. A few men were almost always near her. She drew them to her like a bitch in heat.

   • 2009, Margaret Way, Cattle Baron: Nanny Needed, Don Mills, Ont.: Harlequin Enterprises Limited, →ISBN, page 157:

     “[…] Janis’s behaviour would chill out the hottest-blooded male, but that’s not happening here. What’s wrong with the blessed woman? She’s so utterly dissatisfied with her life—it’s a total mess.” / He’d hit it on the head. “Eliot has to assert himself. They need that break. Get life back into perspective. Janis is a married woman with a child. It’s called responsibility. Commitment.”

3. (of a horse) Light-bodied and lively in temperament, with high speed and endurance.
4. (zoology) Synonym of warm-blooded.
   • 1851 June, Bennet Dowler, Experimental Researches, Illustrative of the Functional Oneness, Unity, and Diffusion, of Nervous Action; in Opposition to the Anatomical Assumption, of Four Sets of Nerves, and a Fourfold Set of Functions, and Transmitted Impressions; […], New Orleans, La.: […] Joseph Cohn, […], pages 16–17:

     For my own part, judging from experiments ranging from the cold-blooded to the hottest-blooded animals—from the alligator to the common fowl—I am constrained to say, that after decapitation, the sensational phenomena and voluntary motion are far more strongly indicated in the headless body, than in the separated head.

   • 1887, Henry C[adwalader] Chapman, “Food”, in Treatise on Human Physiology. For the Use of Students and Practitioners of Medicine., Philadelphia, Pa.: Lea Brothers & Co., page 85:

     By taking little or no exercise, in passing most of the time in sleep, and residing in a tropical climate, or in a temperate one during the hottest summer months, while the experiment lasts, it will be found that the system needs but little food, the waste of the tissues being reduced to a minimum, and there being but little need for the heat produced on account of the high temperature of the surroundings. By living in this way, man can transform himself almost into a cold-blooded or hot-blooded hibernating animal.

   • 1992, Diana Kappel-Smith, Desert Time: A Journey Through the American Southwest, Tucson, Ariz.: The University of Arizona Press, →ISBN, page 109:

     Most hot-blooded animals cannot sweat as we do to get rid of excess body heat, so big “radiator” ears are a common desert adaptation.

• hot-bloodedness

• warm-blooded