hotfoot

plural hotfoots

1. USThe prank of secretly inserting a match between the sole and upper of a victim's shoe and then lighting it.

1. Moving with haste or zeal.

   Half the populace are idle, / Half are busy in a room; / All are gravebound from the cradle, / All are hotfoot for their doom.

   1938, Elwyn Brooks White, The Fox of Peapack, and Other Poems, page 137

1. UKHastily; without delay.

present singular third person hotfoots · participle present hotfooting · participle past hotfooted · past hotfooted

1. transitiveTo run (a distance).

   The Ford was shot up heavily, so Larkin hotfooted the last mile to Ewa. Once there, he took cover beneath a truck as unchallenged Zeros strafed the neatly parked MAG-21 aircraft and the base facilities.

   2010, Eric Hammel, Coral and Blood: The U.S. Marine Corps’ Pacific Campaign, page 55

   1 more example

   He hotfooted the four-and-a-half blocks across town to the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and checked out the books Patterson had mentioned—and everything else about China he could quickly think of.

   2007, R.C. Harvey, Meanwhile...