When learning a new language, there are a lot of things that we need to be aware of. False friends and words with multiple meanings are two of them. That's why it's always better to learn words in context instead of only learning the translation.
In today's post, I'd like to write about one word in particular that has multiple meanings in different languages. As you will have already guessed from the title, that word is hot.
Hot is mostly used as an adjective and thus three main meanings come to mind:
- having a high temperature, e.g. food, weather, body temperature
- spicy food
- sexy
- marked by violence or fierceness, e.g. a hot temper, a hot battle
- sexually excited or receptive, e.g. It's obvious he's hot for her.
- new, e.g. hot off the press
- very bright, e.g. hot colors
- of intense and immediate interest, e.g. some hot gossip
- currently popular or in demand, e.g. Journaly is a hot language learning platform.
- very good, e.g. a hot idea
- absurd, unbelievable, e.g. He wants to fight the champ? That's a hot one.
- electrically energized especially with high voltage, e.g. Caution: The wire is hot.
- radioactive, e.g. uranium is a hot material
- recently and illegally obtained, e.g. He sells hot jewels.
- fast, e.g. a hot new fighter plane
But according to Merriam Webster there are even more meanings:
As you can see, there are far more meanings than those that I initially came up with. In the following table, I compare the first three meanings with those from other languages.
English | hot (high temperature) | hot (spicy) | hot (sexy) | sharp (knife) |
German | heiß | scharf | heiß/scharf, sexy | scharf (Messer) |
Portuguese | muito quente, cálido | picante (Brasil (regional): quente) | quente, excitado | afiado |
Italian | caldissimo, torrido | piccante | calda, sexy | affilato |
French | très chaud, torride | fort | chaud, sexy | tranchant |
Spanish | caliente, caluroso | picante | caliente, sexy | afilado |
I also included the fourth column to show that in German, the same word is used to say that something is spicy and sharp as a knife.
Did you know all the meanings of the English word hot? If not, what was the most surprising to you? Do you know other words that have multiple meanings in one language, but translate to different words in other languages?
Work! Auf Französisch: "Travailler/fonctionner" aber auch "ça marche". Auf Spanisch: "trabajar/funcionar". Auf Deutsch: "arbeiten/funktionieren", aber auch "Das passt" . Aber auf Walisisch nur "gweithio".
Auf Deutsch kann man auch "es läuft", ähnlich wie auf Französisch sagen, aber ja, das ist ein gutes Beispiel :)
Oh, deshalb haben wir Synonyme und betonen Wörter, um Verwirrung zu vermeiden. Ich denke, wenn ihr ein beliebiges Wort nehmt, mit Ausnahme von Verbindungswörtern, werdet ihr Tausende von Bedeutungen finden, ohne dass ein Kontext bereitgestellt wird.
I had no idea about No. 6, No. 10, No. 14 and No. 15. I can't think of words like hot off the top of my head.