hot-wire

1. 1.

   start (a car engine) without a key by bypassing the ignition interlock

   “The woman who lost the car keys had to hot-wire her van”

   Broaderstart

Questions about hot-wire

What does hot-wire mean?

hot-wire means "start (a car engine) without a key by bypassing the ignition interlock".

How many syllables are in hot-wire?

hot-wire has 2 syllables and divides as ho-t-wire under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

Is hot-wire a common word?

hot-wire 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.