hot war
3
6.1
- noun
- /hɑt wɔr/
:
guerra caliente
- So, I would be very worried if I was anybody in the world, a citizen, that the United States is gonna use this Ukraine thing at any moment to push towards a hot war.
And, you know, obviously right now there are two hot wars going on that I'm aware of, maybe more.
- And, you know, obviously right now there are two hot wars going on that I'm aware of, maybe more.
- How do we avoid this kind of escalation of a hot war?
- I know we're trying to avoid a hot war here, but those are some pretty vague threats.
- So the the hot war in Southeast Asia, the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
- We're still, we're still go to, we're we're no longer can have great big hot wars between nations because of nuclear weapons.
- And then that can just escalate and as as opposed to the Cold War with the, with the Soviet Union, this could be a hot war.
Examples
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Israeli officials would not have conducted such operations had they believed a hot war would result.
Academic text (2008) -
The United States, after all, is engaged in two hot wars—in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Academic text (2009) -
How long do you think the hot war in Ukraine will last?
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It's really hard to do that right now while there is a hot war going on in Ukraine.
-
And, you know, obviously right now there are two hot wars going on that I'm aware of, maybe more.
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There are two hot wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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The current hot war is, in so many ways, the result of the old Cold War that it is hard to understand the former without thinking about the latter.
Academic text (2003) -
This action nearly brought the United States and mainland China to a hot war in the Taiwan Strait.
Academic text (1999) -
The crucial recommendation that emerged from the review was that the United States should never again get into a position where it could blunder into a hot war with China over Taiwan.
Academic text (1999) -
The ongoing hot war in Ukraine has attracted international attention and concern.
Synonyms
514
2.7
A violent fight between armed groups in a war
82
5.0
Groups or companies compete strongly to gain power
1
9.4
A situation when a country or group fights in a war
Antonyms
How Violent
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly built from 'hot' (intense, active) + 'war' (armed conflict): a learner who knows both words can readily infer this refers to actual, kinetic fighting rather than a non‑violent conflict. The hot/cold contrast is a common metaphor across languages and the compositional sense is predictable for B1 learners.
Etymology
The term hot war uses a simple picture: hot suggests fire and active fighting, while war is a real fight between armies, unlike a 'cold' conflict where no direct fighting happens. So hot war means 'a war with actual fighting'.