Meaning of hot seat | Babel Free

Definitions

1. The electric chair.
   slang
2. The seat occupied by a game show contestant at a stage where they are answering questions alone.
3. Any stressful situation.
   broadly, figuratively
4. A multiplayer game mode where the players take turns playing the game.
   attributive

Examples

“Looks like you for the hot seat, kid. Come along, both of you.”

“With deep creases slanting across the jowls of his dark bony face from the corners of his wide full mouth, and his sunken dark eyes, he was certainly a prime subject for the artists who sketch candidates for the hot seat for the tabloids, and for three days they had been making the most of it.”

“Now just a minute. You turn up out of nowhere, a routine space shot goes wrong, a new planet appears and you tell us you know all about it. That puts you slap bang in the hot seat, right?”

“In addition to traditional LAN play and online modes, there's […] a hot seat mode in which multiple players take their turns on the same computer […].”

CEFR level