too hot to handle

too hot to handle

1. Literally too hot to pick up or touch. The steak just came out of the pan, so it's too hot to handle right now. I'll cut it after it rests.
2. Too taboo or risky for a particular setting or audience. The scandal was a little too hot to handle for the evening news without heavily censoring the details.
See also: handle, hot
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

too hot to handle

If someone or something is too hot to handle, they are so dangerous, difficult, or extreme that people do not want to be involved with them. Even for someone of his skill and experience, the situation proved too hot to handle. Wherever he has been based, his host country has eventually found him too hot to handle.
See also: handle, hot
Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed.
See also:
  • get hot
  • hotter than a two-dollar pistol
  • like hot cakes, go
  • go like hot cakes
  • hot for (something)
  • hot on
  • hot on (something)
  • hot as fire
  • (as) hot as fire
  • hot tea
References in periodicals archive
"I want to move them into the gutter but can only do that if more people register their phone and make their phones too hot to handle by thieves."
Chances are, high-rise buildings may be difficult risks for brokers to place as more insurers digest this lesson and may view skyscrapers as too hot to handle.
The Medicare Commission, brand new though it is, appears to be taking on the pallid role of a sideshow, or at least a convenient place to tuck away concepts that are temporarily too hot to handle. As the debate continues to boil in Congress and move out into the public-at-large, the notion grows that maybe it was a mistake to announce that for Medicare, "peace is at hand," before any side had run out of ammunition.
The pour was stopped, we helpers fled, The foundry ceiling basked in red, The reactor now too hot to handle, Looked like a giant Roman candle,
Says Goodstein, "The Village is too hot to handle. People want to live there and we get calls all day long asking for apartments.
In the latter instance, heinous ideas gain a new life underground, free of challenge, and their expositors become martyrs--dangerous social critics too hot to handle!
The CIA did indeed say no--but not until early July, almost three weeks after the break-in when things were getting too hot to handle. Earlier, CIA director Richard Helms wrote a complaisant memo instructing his agency to tell the FBI not to dig beyond the burglars arrested in the Watergate, "to confine themselves to the personalities already arrested .
The West Belfast outfit proved too hot to handle for Ballycastle United in the final of the Toals Junior Shield last Wednesday, cruising to a 4-1 win at Seaview.
LEAD ALL ABOUT US PAGES 4&5 HIBS' TEL-TALE SIGNS PAGES 2&3 The PAGE 6 PAGPAGPA E6E 6G BA HIBS' TEL-SCOTLAND'S No.1 FOOTBALL PULL-OUT MICHAEL GL ANNON MICHAEL GANNON Partick Thistle were ripped to shreds in their 4-1 defeat at Tannadice but Muirhead, who slotted a penalty to get the Jags level one one stage, had to admit United were too hot to handle.
Rebecca Linney stepped down from her usual 800m staple but still proved too hot to handle to pick up a 400m PB of 58.4s but Harriers dominance was to be broken in the women's 100m as Liverpool Pembroke and Sefton's Emma Givens produced a superb 13 second display to hold off a glut of chasers.
The blonde No.3 seed and world No.4 was simply too hot to handle as she melted Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 7-5, 6-4 on Court Two.
with bev bevan HEATWAVE Too Hot To Handle /Central Heating (Edsel) MULTI-racial group Heatwave was formed in the UK by two American servicemen, Johnnie Wilder and his brother Keith, with Spaniard Mario Mantese on bass, Czech Bilbo Berger on drums, Jamaican Eric Johns on guitar and Briton Rod Temperton, from Cleethorpes, on keyboards.
But they found the home pack too hot to handle at the New Friarage, where Rovers were 20-7 winners.
The 23-year-old is confident he can soon break the 10-second barrier, but will surely find Bolt too hot to handle when he comes up against the Olympic 100m and 200m champion at the shorter distance at the Golden League meeting in Paris on Friday.
Even at 4pm, a 60p bag weighing 400g on my in-car scales was almost too hot to handle. Thankfully, I'd passed on the chilli sauce!