"hot button" meaning in All languages combined

See hot button on Wiktionary

Adjective [English]

Audio: en-au-hot button.ogg [Australia] Forms: more hot button [comparative], most hot button [superlative]
Etymology: Registered as a trademark by American sales trainer Jack Lacy in 1956, first used in the 1940s. Head templates: {{en-adj}} hot button (comparative more hot button, superlative most hot button)
  1. Alternative form of hot-button Tags: alt-of, alternative Alternative form of: hot-button Synonyms: hot-button, hotbutton
    Sense id: en-hot_button-en-adj-s863VvQy Categories (other): English terms with collocations, English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 13 30 36 21

Noun [English]

Audio: en-au-hot button.ogg [Australia] Forms: hot buttons [plural]
Etymology: Registered as a trademark by American sales trainer Jack Lacy in 1956, first used in the 1940s. Head templates: {{en-noun}} hot button (plural hot buttons)
  1. A central issue, concern or characteristic, especially one that motivates people to make a choice; sometimes also one that people seek to delay taking sides on.
    Sense id: en-hot_button-en-noun-x8-L8o1d Categories (other): English terms with collocations, English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 13 30 36 21
  2. (marketing, originally US) The principal desire that a salesman needs to "hit" in order to make a sale. Categories (topical): Marketing
    Sense id: en-hot_button-en-noun-XUSozS3d Categories (other): American English, English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 13 30 36 21 Topics: business, marketing
  3. An emotional trigger; something that arouses strong emotion or opinions. Related terms: hot potato, not touch something with a ten-foot pole
    Sense id: en-hot_button-en-noun-xU3i7CJp Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 13 30 36 21

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for hot button meaning in All languages combined (7.2kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Registered as a trademark by American sales trainer Jack Lacy in 1956, first used in the 1940s.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "hot buttons",
      "tags": [
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        {
          "text": "was a hot button"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, M. L. Buchman, Light Up the Night",
          "text": "That issue was mostly solved in the modern forces, but it was still a hot button for every student of modern military history.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
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      ],
      "id": "en-hot_button-en-noun-x8-L8o1d",
      "links": [
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        [
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        [
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        ],
        [
          "choice",
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        [
          "taking sides",
          "take sides#English"
        ]
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        {
          "ref": "1944, Dental Items of Interest, volume 66, Dental Items of Interest Publishing Company, page 866",
          "text": "Jack Lacey, a top rating salesman, says that sales are made by touching off a “hot button” within the prospect’s mind.’",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1965, John D. Yeck, How to Get Profitable Ideas, McGraw-Hill, page 197",
          "text": "So one way of producing conviction is to “find the hot button”— something the other person is currently interested in—and show him how your idea can help him get that.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1975, Paul J. Micali, Hot Button Salesmanship, Dow Jones-Irwin, page 8",
          "text": "Therefore, when a prospect is considering buying something, his main concern is what's in it for him. And he always has a dominant desire. There is something he is trying to do which is important to him. We call this dominant desire his “Hot Button.” Once you have found the Hot Button of your prospect, you build your presentation around it.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
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        "The principal desire that a salesman needs to \"hit\" in order to make a sale."
      ],
      "id": "en-hot_button-en-noun-XUSozS3d",
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        [
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          "sale",
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(marketing, originally US) The principal desire that a salesman needs to \"hit\" in order to make a sale."
      ],
      "topics": [
        "business",
        "marketing"
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        {
          "ref": "2009, Gary Smalley, Ted Cunningham, From Anger to Intimacy Study Guide",
          "text": "Because when you recognize your main hot button, you can take the necessary steps to diffuse anger and reestablish connectedness in a healthy relationship.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Barbara McMahon, The Nanny and the Sheikh",
          "text": "“The sooner he gets rid of those children, the better it will be. He is too busy to be encumbered with orphans,” Delleah said. That struck Melissa's hot button. “",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
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          "_dis1": "0 0 100",
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        {
          "_dis1": "0 0 100",
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  "forms": [
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      "tags": [
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    {
      "form": "most hot button",
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          "text": "a hot button issue"
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        {
          "ref": "2012, S. Peacock, Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy",
          "text": "In the course of the vast, sprawling, politically charged, sexually graphic, violent epic that is the Millennium trilogy, Larsson (who, as emails to his publisher revealed, painstakingly anatomised and utilised what he perceived as the 'hot button' elements of crime/thriller novels from writers he admired such as Val McDermid, thomas Harris and Sarah Paretsky) allows the reader — whether male or female — a surrogate, the disgraced middle-aged journalist Mikael Blomkvist.",
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          "ref": "2013, Kenneth Manaster, The American Legal System and Civic Engagement",
          "text": "At a minimum, the diversion of attention from the opponents' main, economic motivation to the hot button death penalty question made it harder for voters to understand the true nature and extent of the justices' alleged failings in their judicial role.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        {
          "_dis1": "0 0 40 60",
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          "_dis1": "0 0 40 60",
          "word": "hotbutton"
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          "text": "was a hot button"
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        {
          "ref": "2014, M. L. Buchman, Light Up the Night",
          "text": "That issue was mostly solved in the modern forces, but it was still a hot button for every student of modern military history.",
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          "ref": "1944, Dental Items of Interest, volume 66, Dental Items of Interest Publishing Company, page 866",
          "text": "Jack Lacey, a top rating salesman, says that sales are made by touching off a “hot button” within the prospect’s mind.’",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1965, John D. Yeck, How to Get Profitable Ideas, McGraw-Hill, page 197",
          "text": "So one way of producing conviction is to “find the hot button”— something the other person is currently interested in—and show him how your idea can help him get that.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1975, Paul J. Micali, Hot Button Salesmanship, Dow Jones-Irwin, page 8",
          "text": "Therefore, when a prospect is considering buying something, his main concern is what's in it for him. And he always has a dominant desire. There is something he is trying to do which is important to him. We call this dominant desire his “Hot Button.” Once you have found the Hot Button of your prospect, you build your presentation around it.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The principal desire that a salesman needs to \"hit\" in order to make a sale."
      ],
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        [
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          "salesman"
        ],
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        "(marketing, originally US) The principal desire that a salesman needs to \"hit\" in order to make a sale."
      ],
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        "marketing"
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          "text": "Because when you recognize your main hot button, you can take the necessary steps to diffuse anger and reestablish connectedness in a healthy relationship.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Barbara McMahon, The Nanny and the Sheikh",
          "text": "“The sooner he gets rid of those children, the better it will be. He is too busy to be encumbered with orphans,” Delleah said. That struck Melissa's hot button. “",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
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      ],
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  "etymology_text": "Registered as a trademark by American sales trainer Jack Lacy in 1956, first used in the 1940s.",
  "forms": [
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      "form": "more hot button",
      "tags": [
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    },
    {
      "form": "most hot button",
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          "text": "In the course of the vast, sprawling, politically charged, sexually graphic, violent epic that is the Millennium trilogy, Larsson (who, as emails to his publisher revealed, painstakingly anatomised and utilised what he perceived as the 'hot button' elements of crime/thriller novels from writers he admired such as Val McDermid, thomas Harris and Sarah Paretsky) allows the reader — whether male or female — a surrogate, the disgraced middle-aged journalist Mikael Blomkvist.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        {
          "ref": "2013, Harvey L. Schantz, Politics in an Era of Divided Government",
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          "ref": "2013, Kenneth Manaster, The American Legal System and Civic Engagement",
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.