Out of the blue I remembered a phrase my mother was fond of — she’d often say things like “He was holding it right in his hot little hands” — and it occurred to me that it must be an idiom she’d picked up somewhere, but where? What was its background? It wasn’t in Partridge, so I turned to the internet and turned up this bulletin board page, where we find:
It seems to turn up first in Victorian fiction. The earliest use of it that I’ve come across is in a short story called “Self-Control”, by Mrs Mary Jane Phillips, published in the December 1857 number of The Ladies’ Repository: ‘”Poor little fellow!” I murmured, and stooped to kiss his fevered cheek, but just then he threw his hot little hands upward, exclaiming, “O don’t, mamma, Feddy didn’t mean to!”‘. Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1863 very popular novel “Sylvia’s Lovers” has this: ‘Sylvia sate down on the edge of the trough, and dipped her hot little hand in the water’.
So it was first used seriously (and mawkishly) about actual feverish children, and of course was repurposed as a humorous reference to such uses. My mother, growing up in the 1920s, probably was unaware of the original Victorian examples, but her parents presumably knew them. I wonder if anyone still uses the phrase?
When I look around on the web, what strikes me is that the phrase today is almost always “my” hot little hands (or “our”). I’ve said it myself that way. “His” hot little hands, as in your mother’s remembered phrase, strikes me as tonally off.
Interesting — both that it’s still used, and that it’s now strictly first-person.
i certainly grew up with it (mainly in the 1980s), and occasionally use it. i think of it as more often in the first or second person (singular in both cases), but third isn’t strange to my ear.
I think of it (perhaps wrongly) as current, and referring, literally or figuratively, to someone receiving something new they’ve been expecting for a long time; say, a reviewer getting a look at a book or a video game right after its release.
I believe I use it occasionally, almost always as “get _ hot little hands on,” and without any person restrictions that I am aware of.
Maybe the earlier “caught red handed” influenced later uses of “hot little hands”?
“Someone receiving something new they’ve been (eagerly) expecting” is exactly what it means to me. First person is common but not required; e.g. these (from COCA) sound normal to me: “Once you have the upgrade hardware in your hot little hands, you’ll want to dive in and get it done”; “Since 9/11, it’s been flying off the shelves. Into whose hot little hands did these gems fly?”
In What Makes Sammy Run?: “She seemed to tower above him as she came forward to take his frenzied little face in her hands and kiss it on the forehead as if they had been married twenty years.” That seems inspired somehow by “hot little hands”.
I agree with the others who say that “hot little hands” suggests avarice, although it probably not as nefarious as “itchy palms” indicate.
I’ve heard of holding things “in your little fist”, but nothing about “hot little hands”.
(Brit, in my 40’s) Very ordinary phrase to my ear. Roughly like what others say, suggests to me a fairly innocent sort of possessiveness.
I’m glad I asked — it’s in much wider use than I would have guessed, and with different connotations.
I’m amazed – based on this thread it seems common and widespread, but I’ve never encountered it before! Has it somehow not made it into the innertubes? Why is it never used of politicians – or is it?
Maybe you saw it and it didn’t register… It’s definitely part of the casual written register used in tubeland.
I don’t easily see it being used in the sense of taking graft, if that’s what you mean. It’s a little too cute for that.
to me, it’s too heymish for politicians (or to turn up often in entertainment industry products) – it’s both too intimate and too quotidian. i hesitate to say so, but perhaps part of a predominantly oral register.
it definitely can, for me, have a connotation of innocent possessiveness (i like that description, PeterL!), but can also just be a slight register shift that elevates and emphasizes, often with a slight edge of friendly sarcasm:
“have you got the groceries?” “right here in my hot little hands.”
“i’m gonna be late, but i’ll be there by intermission, with my libretto in my hot little hands!”
I have it in my hot little hands right now is something I might write, with an implication of mild (possibly childish) excitement. Not being a native speaker I hope that comes through, but I have no idea where I might have picked it up. Little is not well motivated since my hands are relatively large, so it’s clearly a fixed phrase, and the mawkish use for actual feverish children makes sense as an origin. But making sense is not probative, as we all know.
I don’t think I’ve ever used “hot little hands,” but definitely “grubby little hands,” usually with “their.” Which of course implies a more negative kind of eagerness.
My mind went right to the operatic antonym “Your tiny hand is frozen”.
Reminds me of the celebrated fallacy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_hand
Also of the aphorism, beloved of surgeons examining the abdomen of an uncomfortable patient: “Cold hands, warm heart.”
(鬼手仏心)
Familiar to me from childhood (years around 1970). I seem to remember it mostly used by adults about children, as in “Once she gets that into her hot little hands…” or “…get that out of his hot little hands.” With “my”, it sounds to me as if the speaker is mocking themself as childish, like “I want that!” as Lars Mathiesen says. But I may be wrong, especially about later generations.
to me, it’s too heymish for politicians (or to turn up often in entertainment industry products) – it’s both too intimate and too quotidian. i hesitate to say so, but perhaps part of a predominantly oral register.
I agree with all of this.
Re political usage, google found me the Congressional Record for Nov. 17, 1995, in which Rep. Frank Riggs (R.-Calif.) says inter alia “The gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Andrews] not only voted for the Democratic alternative … he also voted for the continuing resolution a couple of nights ago, but let me point out, because I have here in my hot little hands, as they would say, the three rollcall votes that I consider most pivotal.”
I see. “Grubby little hands” I’ve seen a few times.
Oh, and here’s a third-party usage in a 1966 editorial by the Philadelphia Inquirer (quoted in the 4/4/66 Cong. Record by Congressman Dague): “Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s response to this extraordinary act of generosity is a bored sniff that it is not enough. She had hardly had the President’s promise of aid* in her hot little hands when she felt it necessary, in between charming New Yorkers with her manners, to insult us.”
*Context seems to be that LBJ was giving India a billion dollars worth of American wheat for free because of whatever shortfall in its ability to feed itself was then occurring. (The cynic will note that the US farmers who had actually grown it likely weren’t donating it for free so this was a federal subsidy of agribusiness.)
“Why is it never used of politicians – or is it?”
“it’s now strictly first-person.”
I don’t think US people would be surprised by a line like, “Trump’s motivation for the Iran war is to get his hot little hands on their oil.”
I think most third-person instances are intended to be derisive, while first- and second-person uses are more likely just intended to be (self-deprecatingly) humorous.
Same here, except that “40’s” is not my age but the decade in which I was born.
Likewise, though it’s not just US people. I was thinking yesterday about the Gold Museum in Bogotá, one of the great museums of the world. Best not to tell Trump about it as he’ll see it as a justification for invading Colombia.
Martin’s proposed general schema (3rd-person uses are derisive; 1st-and-2nd person uses are self-deprecatingly humorous) satisfactorily accounts for the difference in feel between the 1st and 3rd person examples I gave earlier today, but I wonder if there are counterexamples. Maybe not so much in first-person, since genuine self-derision is a fairly rare phenomenon when compared to self-deprecation, but I don’t have any great problem imagining a humorous/affectionate third-party use or a derisive second-party use. Maybe the “little” in the phrase is key, and it’s one example of a broader pattern of how diminutives can often be used in either a derisive (“belittling”) fashion, on the one hand, or a familiar/affectionate one, on the other, depending on context and tone of voice etc.
Obviously the humorous-self-deprecation vibe may be appropriate for a politician (or indeed for a speaker/writer in many other lines of work) in some contexts but inappropriate in others. It would have been odd in terms of register or something for Sen. McCarthy to say “in my hot little hands” when referring to the piece(s) of paper that was/were his famous alleged list of 205 (or some other, perhaps variable, number) known Communists on the State Department payroll. And indeed the usual accounts just have him saying “I have here in my hand a list …”
It’s an expression I doubt I’ve ever heard spoken, but have seen tolerably often online. Typically in the context of a hobbyist or collector finally receiving an eagerly anticipated gadget or collectible.
I regularly use it (born 1950s). Never thought of it as antiquated. It does suggest getting hold of some coveted or desired item, but not necessarily. Could also just mean that you aren’t keen about it being in those particular hands, which might not lead to an ideal outcome — but not necessarily in a devastating sense. Used about yourself it sounds slightly self-deprecating.