The Collaborative International Dictionary
hot-wire \hot-wire\ v. t. to start (a car) by using a wire instead of a key, as when stealing the car; the wire is connected to points in the ignition circuit that bypass the key.
Wiktionary
vb. (context slang English) To start an automobile engine by bypassing the ignition key wiring
WordNet
v. start (a car engine) without a key by short-circuiting the ignition system; "The woman who lost the car keys had to hot-wire her van"
Usage examples of "hot-wire".
The place was as big as one of those warehouse club megastores and was packed wall-to-wall with Long Island office workers hot-wiring weekend self-images in Hathaway suits, with big-haired girls in sequined jackets and leggings, limbs jangling gold chains on the crashing backbeat of music that braced you like a high wind.
A Lincoln Town Car had swung in front of the canopied entrance of the hotel as, simultaneously, Desis One and Two plunged into the kerb with their two hot-wired cars from the parking lot.
Danny and I reached the ground floor and got out of the Panamint, we would find their car, hot-wire it, and leave them stranded.
Maybe she had grown worried that if Danny and I reached the ground floor and got out of the Panamint, we would find their car, hot-wire it, and leave them stranded.
You told me after the Boniface burning that any mountain kid could hot-wire a car.
Coleman coldcocked him on the sidewalk, slung him against his shoulder like a boozed-out buddy, got him into the Buick and hot-wired it.
However, he proved only slightly more skillful at passing bad checks than he was at hot-wiring Oldsmobiles.
Carrying extras in her bra was easier than breaking into her own apartment or hot-wiring her own car every time she had a brain fart and forgot where she had left something.
He kicked down a side door, hot-wired a convertible waiting for tune-up and drove out to Highway 101, where he got in a drag race with some hood.
Even if a thief cracked the steering column in an attempt to hot-wire the wag, an electric circuit was connected to a small but frightfully destructive package of plastic explosive inside the firewall.
The cars are brightly colored subcompact missiles, hurtling in and out of alleyways like angry wasps: Hot-wiring their drive-by-wire seems to be the national sport, although Fiat's embedded systems people have always written notoriously wobbly software.
It wasn’t a premonition he got from them, more like fear hot-wired direct into his brain.
I'd had my Net-rune hot-wired years before, so I could turn it on and off as I pleased.