Hot Shot

Filed Under January 2007, columns 

Hunka hunka burnin’ non-love.

Dear Word Detective: During the Civil War, iron shot was heated red-hot in a furnace (aboard ship or in shore batteries) before being fired into the side of a wooden ship. These were called “hot shots.” I don’t suppose there is any connection between this incendiary practice and calling someone a “hot shot”? (Still traveling the same road, however, is “big shot” a reference to large caliber ammunition?) — Charles Anderson.

Live and learn. My initial reaction upon reading the first sentence of your question was, I must admit, “Yeah, okay, and when they ran out of ammunition they shot flaming cats and dogs at the enemy, right?” To the munitions-illiterate among us (meaning me), the idea of shooting red-hot cannonballs at ships sounds like yet another implausible seafaring scenario dreamed up by the Committee to Ascribe a Nautical Origin to Everything (CANOE).

But one should, it appears, never underestimate the ingenuity of human beings bent on expunging their enemies of the moment. The use of flaming or heated projectiles actually predates the invention of gunpowder and dates back at least to the heated clay balls catapulted by the Britons at Roman invaders around 54 B.C. “Hot shot,” solid iron cannonballs that were heated and then fired from conventional cannons, appeared in the 16th century, and were apparently used by the British against the Spanish fleet with great success at Gibraltar in 1782.

Reading up on “hot shot” answered two of my initial skeptical questions: (a) Why didn’t the hot cannonball ignite the powder charge the moment it was loaded into the cannon? (a wad of wet clay or straw separated them), and (b) Was the shot still hot enough when it reached its target to set stuff on fire? (yup — at least hot enough to set a smoldering fire in the hull of a ship). Nineteenth century “hot shot” furnaces in which the cannonballs were heated can still be seen at abandoned shore batteries in the US and elsewhere. The US National Park Service even has a web page about them here .

Now, however, it’s time to turn off the Wayback Machine and say that flaming cannonballs are almost certainly not the source of our modern slang term “hot shot” meaning “an exceptionally important or capable person.” The original meaning of “hot-shot” when it appeared in the early 17th century was “one who shoots recklessly” (essentially a “hothead” with a gun) or “a reckless or hotheaded fellow.” The modern sense, which didn’t appear until the 1920s, followed directly from this “recklessly eager” meaning of “hot shot.”

“Big shot” meaning a very important person did originally come from large-caliber weapons (initially in the form “big gun”) in the early 19th century.

 

 

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