It’s So HOT In Here!

Everyone, in every language, refers to temperature, probably multiple times a day, whether referring to themselves, the weather (particularly the British!), or without necessarily realising it or any presence of noticeable physical temperature (read on for this last one). Let’s begin with the basic words hot and heat; the difference between the adjective and the noun is merely a change of vowels. This alteration of an internal vowel is known as an ablaut inflection. It is a very ancient trait of Indo-European languages which has all but disappeared from most modern languages although it is still quite common in English. Thus we have sit, sat and seat, raise, rise and rose, draw and drew and many others. The entire process seems so natural to speakers of English that Americans invented the word dove (as in swimming pool, not as in aviary) as the past tense of dive. (The British word is dived.)

Another ablaut inflection is Het, being the past tense of the verb to heat. So, to get all het up is to become “all heated up”. A heat meant the same as a heating. Thus a cookery book of 1430 instructs us to “sette it on the fire an giffe it an hete” where we might have said “set it on the fire and give it a heating”. This sense of heat led to its use in racing. Before racing a horse it would be given a preparatory run. Today, we would refer to this as a “warming-up exercise” but in the 16th century it was called giving the horse a heat (i.e. “a heating”). In time, any preliminary run before a final race became known as a heat and when two runners cross the finish line together it is called a dead heat.

Hot and heat are purely Germanic words with, apparently, no relatives in other Indo-European languages. Warm, on the other hand, was related to Latin formus, “warm”, Sanskrit gharma, “heat” and Greek thermos, “hot”. Although thermos meant “hot” in Greek, a Thermos (note the capital letter) flask/bottle will keep cold things cold as easily as it keeps hot things hot. A trail left by an animal is said to be warm if it is very recent, suggesting that the warmth of the animal’s body may still be detected. This is why, in children’s games, one is said to get warmer as one approaches the goal, an example of using a temperature word without any direct feeling of heat that we referred to earlier.

*Above: An image that perfectly captures “chilling out”*

Latin had the word gelidus which meant “icy cold” or “frosty”. In Germanic languages this shows up as Dutch koude, German kalt, kälte, Old English cald and modern English cold. Cool is yet another ablaut variation, this time of cold (although where the final ‘d’ went is anyone’s guess). It is thought that the Old English cald was pronounced “chald”. Just knowing that makes it a little easier to see that chill is also related. Temperature words are also used to describe a mood, normally of a gathering of people (“There was a frosty atmosphere when he walked into the meeting” or “She got a very warm reception”), but also individuals (“She gave him the cold shoulder” or “He went to the lake to chill out”).

Related to the above, words for heat and cold are also used to denote passion. Hence, when we say “X leaves us cold” we mean that X does not inflame our passions. Perhaps it might if we were a little more hot-blooded. Also, cold comfort is usually comfort in word only and is devoid of sympathy. Movies will often portray a woman, or a group of women, reacting to a good looking man walking past by fanning their faces with their hands as if to cool themselves down, as well as the descriptive phrase used for either sex, “He/She’s HOT!”.

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