Translation Question English/US

[snooper]

Does the word "hotness" mean something different from "heat" in the US?

I have come across it a lot in Lit stories, and have always assumed that they were synonyms, but recently on the AH it was used specifically to mean, apparently, the extreme of "cool" as in "cool, man, cool".

 

[cantdog]

If a babe (of either gender) is "hot" it does sound like it should be related to "heat" but to American ears, the quality of being "Hot" in that sense can't be "heat."

Because heat is
1. the real, temperature-related stuff or
2. an emotional state of arousal, or
3. a physical state of estrus, oestrus to you~~
(and analogously to mean (1.)bad consequences (he took a lot of heat for saying that) and (2.)plain excitement (the heat of the moment) and for
4. a race within a tournament of races, and

5. last-century slang for the attention of the police or the police themselves, as the Frank Zappa lyric I don't even care if your dad's the heat or the Dylan lyric to even show/ up on the street/ unless you wanna draw the heat and another meaning, see below)

but not somehow a good word for the quality of being a hot babe. So that's got to be something else. Hotness.

Hotness is already being used for a particular kind or irritant spiciness, but the analogy is acceptable.

Heat is also used for the spiciness, so the whole scene is fairly muddled and fucked.

cantdog

 

[HawaiiBill]

Being hot is cool

Does the word "hotness" mean something different from "heat" in the US?

It means,"The quality or state of being hot; heat." [OED]

Because 'hot' can mean 'cool' in the vernacular -- and nothing
wrong with that here -- it could slide over in some uses and
be understandable. Can't say I've run into it, however.

Cantdog, you seem to be saying in your response there is
no physical heat in a woman being 'hot.'

Sorry about that, but I've felt that furnace next to me too many
times and always in the best of all possible circumstances to
just let that one lie.

I picked up an old friend and his wife at the airport not too
many years ago and she got in my pickup between us for
the drive to my house. Yes, I have a stick shift, and sitting
between us two studs and getting her legs rubbed incidentally
as I drove had her heating up to the extent that none of us
were saying a word, just driving along in the Hawai`i heat
and loving every ticking second of it.

Aloha

 

[cantdog]

You mean my number 2.-- an emotional state of arousal. I was making the distinction between the, let's say, woman's internal state of mind and body, on the one hand, and the external qualities as perceived by the fellow who remarks to his buddy in the passing car, "She's hot!" on the other. I don't think you can use "hotness" to describe the condition of the woman's arousal. I think it is pretty common to use "heat" for that, not least because of the peripheral circulatory boost you describe in the car.

But the question was, in what way is "hotness" used. You'd sound ignorant, uneducated and rural-- or at least like someone who has English as a second language-- to talk about the hotness the woman was feeling, but if you spoke of the rising heat she was feeling, it would strike the ear as appropriate, idiomatic use of that word.

So I listed it as a use for "heat" as opposed to a use for "hotness."

The girl in geometry class can possess the quality of hotness, if she's a babe, but you don't, in that context, say she has heat.

I like the stick shift story, though. Women can feel sensations in casual situations like the one you describe which would be difficult for men to credit. Talk to someone in hormonal therapy toward a sex-change about the difference in the arousal response, in its quality and intensity, with womanly hormones in the blood. These are the people who know first hand both kinds of "heat," and the differences are very marked.

 

[HawaiiBill]

not quite the same thing

'Hotness' and 'heat' aren't synomyms though
there are probably places where they could
be interchanged. 'Hotness' seems more to
emphasize the 'state' of being hot rather than
the 'heat' itself. More ephemeral.

Perhaps 'heat' is a quality you could measure
with a thermometer but 'hotness' would only
have meaning in mental or emotional measure
in reference to a person or in, for example,
ductibility because of a 'state of hotness' in steel..

One thing for sure, when you're hot, you're
hot and when you're not . . .

How you doin' otherwise?

 

[snooper]

Thanks, all.

Believe it or not, that made it a lot clearer.

 

[cantdog]

Oh, no, I was thorough and scholarly-- you don't get off that easy.

What about the Brit version of our common tongue, snooper? You seem to imply that, even in slang, there is no such word as "hotness" over there. True?

cantdog

 

[cantdog]

Hey, Bill

Doin' dandy, most ways. Summer here is a good thing for everyone's peace of mind. Things are burstingly green and lush and the babes are out in their scanties; it's hard to feel February will come again in these circs.

I've managed to get the gas-powered 'fridge out of the camp, onto the rowboat, across the mile of water, off the boat onto my fuckin brother's fuckin ancient truck, all the way to the dealer's shop, about an hour and a half away from the landing on the lake, then do it all the other direction, fixing my fuckin brother's truck's ancient fucking tailpipe for him.

Sixty bucks' worth of repair. Shit. But you can't get someone to come out there to fix it in situ, it takes two hours each way; they'd spend the entire day on one call.

But that's it for a while. The 'fridge is working, the stove is repaired, and the gas lights are once again functional. The roof is new and sound, with two new skylights. The woodshed is sound again and re-roofed. I feel the camp is entirely liveable again, for the first time since my father died.

Work does not seem to ever end, but a lot of that work was in the woods, which I love with a deep and grateful passion and awe.

So I'm fine.

You?

cantdog

 

[snooper]

What about the Brit version of our common tongue, snooper? You seem to imply that, even in slang, there is no such word as "hotness" over there. True?

According to OED there was such a word in the mid-sixteenth century. I had never encountered it except in stories on Lit (and similar places) in sentences such as "He could feel the hotness of her skin". In those circumstances I would use "heat".

Then I came across it where it implied "desirabilty" as in "This guy had real hotness". Hence the question.