white heat

noun4

1. •
   The state or temperature at which matter emits white light.

   • George comes over to work the doors while you swing well-broken coal into flame fiercer than ever, at pure white heat that drives you back scorched and blind from each quick shot. — 1956
2. •
   A state of intensive activity.
3. •
   A critical situation which causes a significant development in something; a force that metaphorically forges something.

   • The white heat of events tempered these new political ideas, allowing the magistrates and others to forge them into a coherent alternative ideology. — 1995
4. •
   (UK) A strategy for economic growth through technological development, especially associated with the government of Harold Wilson.

   • Wilson's white-heat strategy continued down the same path; its potency as a vote winner in its own right offset by the attention ministers themselves gave to modernising rhetoric. — 1997