Phraseology and Culture in English

English Idioms: 
 
hot rod 
hot dog
hot line 
hot air
hot war 
hot shot

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Doris Schönefeld 
hot date 
hot brush
hot cross bun 
hot pot
hot head 
be hot off the press (18x) 
be hot on the heels of sb 
go / sell like hot cakes
hop / be like a cat on hot bricks 
get / go / feel / become hot under the collar
Russian Idioms: 
 
delat’ 
þto-l. pod gorjaþuju ruku 
do sth in an irritated way, be seething 
(do sth under a hot hand’) 
gorja
þaja linija 
hot line, agony aunt 
(hot line) 
gorja
þij telefon 
“ 
“ 
(hot telephone) 
po gorja
þim sledam 
– immediately 
(on hot traces) 
– (be) on a hot scent, have a good lead 
kto-l. kak na gorja
þix ugljach 
be like a cat on hot bricks 
(sb is like on hot coals) 
xvatit’ gorja
þego do slez 
go through many unpleasant things 
(the hot is enough to tears) 
German Idioms: 
 
heißer Ofen 
impressive, powerful, fast vehicle 
(hot stove) 
heiße Luft 
empty, boastful talk 
(hot air) 
heißer Draht 
(hot wire)
direct link to an important person / ad-
ministrative body 
der Tropfen auf dem heißen Stein 
well-meaning but ineffective action 
(a drop on a hot stone) 
ein ganz heißes Eisen im Feuer haben°
(have a very hot iron in the fire) 
um den heißen Brei herumreden 
beat about the bush 
(talk around hot mash) 
auf heißen Kohlen sitzen 
(sit on hot coals)
be like a cat on hot bricks, be on tender-
hooks
mit der heißen Nadel stricken 
do sth quickly and not carefully 
(knit sth with a hot needle) 

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Hot, heiß, and gorjachij
161
auf einem/dem heißen Stuhl sitzen°° 
be in the hot seat
(sit on a/the hot chair) 
° 
This is a blend of two idioms: ein heißes Eisen (be a hot potato) and ein
Eisen im Feuer haben (have more than one/another iron in the fire), 
probably produced accidentally, since the intended meaning is the 2nd 
only have an iron in the fire. 
°° 
The German phrase is a fairly new loan translation of the English one. 
These data cannot be discussed exhaustively and in great detail. To make 
my point, I will look at a few phrases and idioms which make their cultural 
load especially obvious. 
The first expression is an English NP with hot as noun modifier: the hot 
seat. The German data contain almost identical expressions: der heiße 
Stuhl, auf dem heißen Stuhl sitzen (‘sit on the hot seat’), the only difference 
being the more specific word Stuhl (‘chair’) vs. English seat. Still, from my 
knowledge as a native speaker of German, I understand that the German 
expressions have been borrowed from English as a loan translation. The 
fact that idiomatic dictionaries of German do not (yet) contain this phrase 
hints at its fairly new emergence and usage in German. Being a loan trans-
lation, it also inherits the etymology of the English origin. Cowie et al. 
(1985) explain its meaning in the following way: 
the hot seat 
–
electric chair, a means of executing criminals 
–
figurative: a position in which one is especially open and vul-
nerable to criticism, attack, questions etc... 
The second sense also served as the name of a TV-show on British televi-
sion in which people were placed “in the hot seat”. It is probably from this 
show that German imported the expression. More “habitual” German idioms 
expressing a comparable scenario are im Kreuzfeuer der Kritik stehen (‘be
under fire (from all sides)’), or jmd an den Pranger stellen (‘to pillory 
someone’). For these we find identically motivated expressions in Russian: 
podvergnut’sja perekrestnomy doprosy (‘undergo / be subject to a cross 
examination’), or postavit’ kogo-l. k pozornomy stolby (‘place someone to 
the pillory’). Expressions employing the concept of the hot seat could not 
be identified in the Russian data, and also Russian dictionaries do not have 
it. This suggests that the Russian way of construing a comparable scenario 
does not employ this conceptualization. In English usage, literal hot seat is 
motivated by a metonymic relation 
EFFECT STANDS FOR CAUSE 
(hot – elec-

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Doris Schönefeld 
tricity), the figurative meaning results from a mapping of the SD (a crimi-
nal sitting on the electric chair / being executed) onto the TDs of politics, 
public life, sports or, more recently, of this TV-show. As the examples 
suggest, German seems to borrow only the extended sense: 
(xvii) Petz saß auf einem heißen Stuhl nachdem sein Team ... in den Abstiegssog 
geraten war. 
(xviii) Doch weder waren der ‚heiße Stuhl’ noch fragende Bürger da, die Wolters 
ins Schwitzen gebracht hätten. 
The second example I will discuss here is the English sentence fragment sth
sells like hot cakes. It has an equivalent phrase in German etwas geht weg 
wie warme Semmeln. Russian is different again, this time Russian concep- 
tualizes the respective scenario in a similar way, but it focuses on the speed 
with which something sells: 
þto-n. idet / raskupaetsja narasxvat (sth sells 
quickly), or 
þto-n. prjamo iz ruk rbut (sth is taken straightforwardly from 
someone’s hands). This is different from both English and German, which 
both focus on a product that sells especially well: hot cakes and hot rolls, 
fresh from the baker’s. 
The last example to be cited here is English get / go / feel / become hot 
under the collar. In German, the concept of getting angry also attracts a 
number of idiomatic expressions. The ones closest to the English example 
are da platzt einem der Kragen (‘the collar explodes’), or da schwillt einem 
der Kamm (‘the (cocks)comb swells’). They both can be related to the same 
metaphor: 
ANGER IS HEATED FLUID IN A CONTAINER
, but they focus on the 
extension in volume, which is different from the English expression’s fo-
cus, the rise in temperature. The Russian equivalents kto-n. zakupaet ot 
þero-n. (‘sb starts to cook from sth’), or u kogo-n lopaetsja terpenie (‘at sb 
explodes the patience’) exhibit both strategies: rise in temperature and ex-
tension in volume, though again the construals are slightly different. In the 
first case, the image is someone whose blood starts to boil, and in the sec-
ond case, it is an emotion (i.e. the content in a container) that bursts, not the 
container itself.