subs. (racing and colloquial).—A bout; a turn; a trial; by whose means the ‘field’ is gradually reduced. Cf., HANDICAP.

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  1681.  DRYDEN, Epilogue to Saunders’s Tamerlane the Great, 23.

        But there’s no hopes of an old batter’d Jade;
Faint and unnerv’d he runs into a Sweat,
And always fails you at the Second HEAT.

2

  1751.  SMOLLETT, Peregrine Pickle, ch. lxxxviii. Our adventurer had the satisfaction of seeing his antagonist distanced in the first and second HEATS.

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  1753.  The Adventurer, No. 37. The first HEAT I put my master in possession of the stakes.

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  1819.  SCOTT, The Bride of Lammermoor, ch. xxii. There was little to prevent Bucklaw himself from sitting for the county—he must carry the HEAT—must walk the course.

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  ON HEAT, subs. phr. (venery).—Amorously inclined, HOT (q.v.). [Said of women and bitches.]

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