hot line

1. 1.

   a direct telephone line between two officials

   Broadertelephone line

Questions about hot line

What does hot line mean?

hot line means "a direct telephone line between two officials".

Is hot line a common word?

hot line is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.