What is the origin of the phrase ‘hotter than a $2 pistol’?
Years ago, someone told me that it came from the FP-45 Liberator pistol, which indeed cost about $2. A cheap pistol like that would get hot; but since it was a single-shot, I don’t think it would get hot enough to evoke the phrase.
When and where did the phrase originate?
I always thought it meant a stolen gun that sold cheap on the street. (Hot meaning stolen in this case.)
Yep, stolen gun passed around on the street is what I’ve always heard.
It’s not an expression I’m familiar with, but this would be my read on it, too.
From The Phrase Finder:
Hotter than a two-dollar pistol - Very hot, an allusion to cheap 19th-century pistols that go hot when fired. From the Mountain Range chapter,“Facts on File Dictionary of American Regionalisms: Local Expressions from Coast to Coast” by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 2000). Page 376.
Yet another phrase I’ve never heard!
So how is this phrase used colloquially?
“That gal’s hotter than a $2 pistol” meaning that you’d not be adverse to spending some time with her.
I’d say it has a more negative connotation: someone hiding out from the cops is “hotter than a $2 pistol” for everyone hiding him or around him. I can think of more uses of it that way than as in “damn, she’s hot!”
I’ve also heard it used for heat-hot: “Damn, that lawnmower’s hotter than…” “That sun is…” “This room is…”
But metaphorical bad-heat trouble is what I’d put as definition #1.
Although I’ve heard the phrase, I think its actual use is rare. Interestingly, Ngram Viewer for "two dollar pistol"shows a sharp rise in printed use from about 1964 to 1977 and then a precipitous drop from 1978 to 1985.
This is how dad used it. (We lived in the desert, y’see…)
Maybe you need to account for inflation. (Apparently, there is a “$3 pistol” variant.)
Hotter than a $2 pistol is going to mean, hot as in do not want to hold it for any period of time. IF someone sold you a handgun for $2 they wanted it out of their hands for deniability purposes.