In 1960s slang, a “heater” meant a handgun, specifically a pistol. If you came across this word while reading S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders or watching a film from that era, that’s exactly what the character is talking about: someone carrying a heater is carrying a gun.
Origins in Gangster Culture
The slang use of “heater” for a firearm didn’t start in the 1960s. It traces back to the 1930s, rooted in American mafia and gangster culture. The connection is straightforward: a gun heats up when fired. The term became a fixture of hardboiled crime fiction and noir films throughout the 1930s and 1940s, spoken by tough guys and private detectives in countless pulp novels and movies. By the 1950s and 1960s, it had filtered into everyday street slang, particularly among young men in urban areas.
How It Appears in The Outsiders
Most people searching for this term have probably just encountered it in S.E. Hinton’s 1967 novel The Outsiders, one of the most widely assigned books in American middle and high schools. The novel’s slang reflects a blend of 1950s and mid-1960s vocabulary, matching both its setting and the time Hinton was writing. In educational guides for the book, “heater” is consistently glossed as “a hand-gun” or “a pistol.”
The characters in The Outsiders are working-class teenagers in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and their language pulls from the same tough-kid vocabulary that had been circulating in American culture for decades. “Heater” fit naturally into that world, sounding more casual and coded than saying “gun” outright.
Not the Same as the Baseball Term
If you’ve heard sportscasters call a fastball a “heater,” that’s a completely different usage, and it came later. The baseball meaning didn’t appear until the mid-1980s, roughly two decades after the 1960s gun slang was at its peak. In any 1960s context, “heater” almost certainly refers to a firearm, not a pitch.
Why the Term Faded
Like most slang, “heater” had a shelf life. It peaked as common street vocabulary from the 1930s through the 1960s, then gradually gave way to newer terms. By the 1980s and 1990s, different slang for guns had taken over in popular culture. Today, the word sounds distinctly vintage, which is part of why it trips up readers encountering it in older novels and films. Outside of period pieces and classic literature, you’re far more likely to hear “heater” used for a fastball or, of course, the appliance that warms your house.