[A humble request: If you can, please donate to help me carry on tracing word histories. Thank you.]
First recorded in British English in 1774, the phrase hot from the press, and its variants, mean:
– just printed, newly published;
– hence: novel, exciting, sensational.
The usual explanation is as follows—for example in Allen’s Dictionary of English Phrases (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2008), the British lexicographer Robert Allen [s.v. hot, page unnumbered]:
hot off/from the press
newly printed or published: with reference to the use of hot-metal printing, in which newly printed material was indeed ‘hot’ for a time. The (early 20th cent.) expression hot news has the same origin.
John Minshull: The Merry Dames (1804): “My dear, here—here is my pamphlet hot from the press. Use it at your pleasure in the disposing of its merits.”
I have not, however, found any evidence that would corroborate this explanation.
Although in hot from the press, the noun press is certainly short for printing-press, it seems to me that in this phrase the adjective hot may have the much older following meaning: (of news or information):
– arriving soon after the event;
– hence: novel, exciting, sensational.
The following are two early texts in which the adjective hot has that meaning—incidentally, these texts contain the expressions hot news and hotter news, which contradicts Robert Allen’s final assertion:
1-: From a letter, dated Qazvin, in Persia, Thursday 28th April 1569, that one Laurence Chapman wrote to “a worshipfull merchant of the companie of Russia in London”—as published in The principall nauigations, voiages and discoueries of the English nation, made by Sea or ouer Land, to the most remote and farthest distant Quarters of the earth at any time within the compasse of these 1500. yeeres [&c.] (London: Printed by George Bishop and Ralph Newberie, 1589), by the English geographer Richard Hakluyt (1552-1616) [page 414]—karsies is a variant of kerseys—“them” refers to the Portuguese:
Considering the colde sales which were there, as well for your karsies, as also the hot newes, that Ormuz way was shut vp by occasion that the Indians do warre against them, which is true in deed: and againe the desire that the worshipfull hath to haue such commodities bought, I thought it necessarie to buy them.
2-: From A Tragi-Comedy: Called, Match mee in London (London: Printed by B. Alsop and T. Fawcet, 1631), by the English playwright and pamphleteer Thomas Dekker (circa 1572-1632) [Act 3, page 45]:
Enter Queene, and Ladies.
Omn. The Queene.
Qu. I thanke your highnesse for the bird you gaue me,
King. What bird?
Qu. Your Tassell gentle, shee’s lur’d off and gone.
King. How gon! what’s gone!
Qu. Your woman’s fled,
Whom you prefer’d to me, she’s stolne from Court.
King. You iest.
Qu. bee it so.—Goes away.
King. I haue hotter newes for you,
Your Fathers head lies here.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the phrase hot from the press and variants that I have found:
1-: From an advertisement for the first number of The St. James’s Magazine; Or, Memoirs of our own Times (London, England), which was to be issued on Tuesday 1st March 1774—advertisement published in Drewry’s Derby Mercury (Derby, Derbyshire, England) of Friday 18th February 1774 [page 4, column 3]:
THE EDITOR to the PUBLIC.
When Wit once halts in an enlighten’d Age,
And Poets prove as barren as the Stage.
When Taste perverted from its course we find,
And various follies Court each giddy mind.
What letter’d Dunghills catch the wand’ring Eye
To yield each Fool, of nonsense his supply.—
To greet the Infant Month, what state appears!
[…]
Hot from the Press the motley’d Olio flies;
Rapes,—scraps of bawdy, well invented lies,
Fresh cut and dry’d, compile each curious Prize.
[…]
Science bemoaning this unletter’d scene,
Deigns here to raise her only Magazine;
In times degenerate and rude as these.
Chalks out this strait, but lib’ral walk to please;
Here lifts her Shield in lit’ratures defence,
And yields her fruit to none, but Men of Sense.
2-: From a review of “a new farce called the Best Bidder”, performed at Covent-Garden, London—review published in The European Magazine, and London Review (London, England) of December 1782 [page 467, column 2]:
—Context: Inkhorn is “a news writer”, and Sir Tedious Prose is “a gentleman who is much addicted to public speaking”; Inkhorn has assured Sir Tedious Prose “that he will write him into fame”:
The act ends with Inkhorn hurrying in with the proof of Sir Tedious’s speech hot from the press, and ready to be put into any speaker’s mouth that wants it.
3-: From The Merry Dames, or The Humourist’s Triumph over the Poet in Petticoats, and the Gallant Exploits of the Knight of the Comb. A Comedy in three Acts (New York: Printed for the Author, by G. & R. Waite, 1805), by John Minshull [Act 2, page 18]—this text also contains the phrase warm from the press:
Peggy. Madam, the Doctor is come.
Mrs. Lively. Let him enter.
[…] Enter Van Yonika Doggerelus Catharticus […].
[…]
Van. […] She wants to amuse away her pains, in the viewing my Solomon-Gundiad. (Aside.) O my dear, my last publication is warm from the press, and will so please you, there’s no doubt but it will drive away the tooth-ach.
Mrs. Lively. Let me see it, Oh! O! O! O yes, let me see it. (Stretching out her arm to receive the book in her hand.
Van. Ah! just as I thought, my Solomon-Gundiad is a rare piece of humour, and her keen sensibility will extract the essence, then her tooth will be at ease. My dear, here—here is my pamphlet hot from the press. Use it at your pleasure in the disposing of its merits. (Rolls up the publication entitled the Solomon-Gundiad, and with a humorous dexterity places the book into her hand, as she stretches out her arm with her face turned from him.)
4-: From The Virtuous Wife, A Sentimental Tale (Sudbury (Suffolk): Printed for the Author, by J. Burkitt, 1812), by Gervase C. Leverland [Preface, page v]:
Pamphlets, and Publications of the present day, are not unlike cross-buns on Good Friday, sold hot from the press, and by the dozen, and as soon are buried in oblivion.
5-: From a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Protestant Clergy of England, by ‘a Catholic Priest’, i.e., the British Jesuit Peter Gandolphy (1779-1821), published in The Oxford University and City Herald, and Midland County Chronicle (Oxford, Oxfordshire, England) of Saturday 23rd January 1813 [page 4, column 1]:
Now the climax seems completed, and we are all pronounced Pagans. “Conyers Middleton’s Letter from Rome,” has been just put into my hands, hot from the press; and I do not conceive that colour can make us blacker, than the shades in which we are there drawn.
word histories 