white heat
1
7.8
- noun
- /waɪt hiːt/
:
calor blanco
- Her skin would grow luminous with the white heat of it.
- white heat and red
He said start at white heat and build from there.
- He said start at white heat and build from there.
- Outside the the glare, the white heat of the cameras and their political and social constituencies.
Examples
-
All of the Middletons felt the white heat, especially on the few occasions when things went wrong.
-
The Wing Riders brought word of the contact, two of them, speeding out of the sun where it hung against the sky in a blazing white heat.
Fiction book (1993) -
There were days of white heat.
Fiction book (1995) -
Tidily, she put her cerebration away in the memory slot of her disciplined mind, where it would stay at the same intensity of white heat until her next meeting with the board.
Fiction book (1995) -
The vast and cruel world, still, dry, deadly, Slowly withering beneath the white heat of that desert sun, the perfect place to hatch a brood of horror; or of hate.
-
The crucible is then placed in the furnace, which has been heated to white heat to receive it.
Synonyms
583
1.0
A feeling of being hot or warm
9
2.8
A higher than normal level of heat in the air
1
1.4
How warm something is because of its temperature
Antonyms
How Hot
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is directly compositional: 'white' describes an appearance caused by extreme temperature and 'heat' denotes temperature, so a learner who knows both words can infer 'extremely intense/high heat' (cf. 'white-hot'). The color-as-intensity metaphor and the simple adjective+noun construction are cross-linguistically common and predictable, making this readily understandable to a B1 learner.
Etymology
White heat comes from what you see when metal gets extremely hot: the metal begins to 'glow' a bright white, showing very high heat. That's why white heat means an extremely high temperature or very intense energy.