hell
//hɛl//
informalForms
- Plural
- hells
Definitions
1.A place or situation of great suffering in life.
- My new boss is making my job a hell.
- I went through hell to get home today.
- So how do the scientists cope with their work being ignored for decades, and living in a world their findings indicate is on a “highway to hell”?.
2.A place for gambling.
- Here’s five-and-twenty for you. Don’t be losing it at the hells now.
- There's light behind here, a hole through the wall. I believe the place is a regular swindling hell.
3.An extremely hot place.
- You don’t have a snowball's chance in hell.
4.Used as an intensifier in phrases grammatically requiring a noun.
- What the hell is wrong with you?!
- He says he’s going home early? Like hell he is.
- I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.
1.Used to express discontent, unhappiness, or anger.(colloquial)
- Oh, hell! I got another parking ticket.
2.Used to emphasize.(colloquial)
3.Used to introduce an intensified statement following an understated one; nay; not only that, but.(colloquial)
- Do it, or, rest assured, there will be no more Middle Eastern crisis – hell, there will be no more Middle East!
1.Alternative form of the hell or like hell.(colloquial)
Frequency
Overall
Common· #739
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Common
- General reading & writing
- Uncommon
- Academic
- Rare
- Literature
- Uncommon
Related words
Antonyms
Etymology
From Middle English hel, hell, helle, hælle, from Old English hel, hell, from Proto-West Germanic *hallju, from Proto-Germanic *haljō (“hell, netherworld”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱel- (“to cover”). First attested in c. 725.
Cognates