hot take

A hot take is a quick, strongly worded opinion, often deliberately provocative, usually fired off in reaction to the news. A cold take is the opposite: an opinion so obvious or safe that nobody could argue with it.

What a hot take is

Merriam-Webster defines it as a quickly produced, strongly worded and often deliberately provocative opinion. The heat is the point. A hot take is designed to get a reaction, and it often trades careful thinking for speed and confidence.

Online, people also use it ironically. “Hot take: pizza is good” is a joke precisely because it isn’t spicy at all. And in reviews you’ll sometimes see a gentler sense, a fresh spin on something familiar, as in “a hot take on a classic song.”

Examples

• “Hot take: the sequel was better than the original.”
• “Every sports show is just two guys yelling hot takes at each other.”
• “Cold take, but sleep is important.”

Where it came from

The habit of loud, instant opinions comes from sports talk radio, and the phrase took off in sports writing. Merriam-Webster dates “hot take” to 2012, and Wikipedia points to that year’s endless commentary about quarterback Tim Tebow. Know Your Meme counts a November 2012 tweet by sportswriter Eric Koreen among the earliest uses. A 2014 essay by John Herrman in The Awl helped carry the term into journalism generally.

By April 2015 it was a media in-joke. When BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith tweeted that the site was trying not to do hot takes, Slate, Jezebel and The New Republic all answered with pieces about the term.

What’s a cold take?

It’s an informal flip of the phrase, so the meaning wobbles. Most often it means an opinion everyone already agrees with. In sports circles it can also mean a confident prediction that aged badly; the account Freezing Cold Takes, started in 2015, built a following by resurfacing exactly those.

Related terms

• Rage bait: content made to make you angry.
• Ratio: when the replies outnumber the likes.
• Shitpost: a deliberately low-effort post.

See more terms like this in our internet slang dictionary.