hots

1. 1
   nounslangplural

   A feeling of strong physical or sexual attraction toward another person.

   By the second week of rehearsals, half the cast had the hots for the director.

   Office gossip suggested the manager had the hots for a junior analyst.

   Note

   A plural-only slang noun that almost never appears outside one frame: have the hots for someone. The article is fixed, so nobody has hots or a hot. The attraction is aimed with for, as in Michael and Matthew Chapman's Strong Bad Email #17 (2002). It belongs to casual talk, so formal writing calls for attraction or desire instead.

2. 2
   verbUK

   Third-person singular simple present of hot.

   The competition hots up as the deadline approaches.

   The debate hots up whenever taxes come up.

   Note

   Here hot is a verb, and its present-tense form usually comes paired with up: things hot up when they become lively or exciting. The same verb can also mean to heat or become hot. Keep it apart from the slang noun of attraction, which shares the spelling. That noun always carries the, while the verb never takes an article.

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