Meaning of white heat | Babel Free

Definitions

1. The state or temperature at which matter emits white light.
   countable, uncountable
2. A state of intensive activity.
   countable, uncountable
3. A critical situation which causes a significant development in something; a force that metaphorically forges something.
   countable, uncountable
4. A strategy for economic growth through technological development, especially associated with the government of Harold Wilson.
   UK, countable, uncountable

Examples

“George comes over to work the doors while you swing well-broken coal into flame fiercer than ever, at pure white heat that drives you back scorched and blind from each quick shot.”

“The Britain that is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution will be no place for restrictive practices or for outdated methods on either side of industry.”

“The white heat of events tempered these new political ideas, allowing the magistrates and others to forge them into a coherent alternative ideology.”

“Wilson's white-heat strategy continued down the same path; its potency as a vote winner in its own right offset by the attention ministers themselves gave to modernising rhetoric.”

“The Internet revolution had been one of the trends which for all Blair's white-heat futurology he had underestimated in Opposition.”

“We had moved from being the party of ‘white heat’ to the party of sepia-tinged nostalgia. We had become a party squabbling over its own past, rather than one focused on the future of the country.”

CEFR level