Definition of "hot-wire" [hot-wire]

• Informal To start the engine of (an automobile, for example) without a key, as by short-circuiting the ignition system. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Heavy traffic can make it difficult to hear his dogs, and during our first day in the field someone tried to hot-wire an ATV Bolen had left at the truck."
• "An ambitious, multibillion-dollar project to hot-wire the new Southwest border fence with high-tech radar, cameras and satellite signals has been plagued with serious system failures and repeated delays and will probably not be completed for another seven years — if it is finished at all."
• "Growing vegetables is useful; but so is learning how to shoot a gun, hot-wire a car, and manipulate our way into a bomb shelter."