Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adverb Very; extremely.
- adjective Excellent; exceptional.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- phrase nonstandard
Hell have . - adjective slang, chiefly N CA Intensifier, signifies an abundance of a thing;
much ormany . - adjective slang, chiefly N CA
a lot ; or, a hell of a lot. - adverb slang, chiefly N CA Intensifier (modifies verbs); to a large extent;
totally ;very much . - adverb slang, chiefly N CA Intensifier (modifies adjectives); to a large degree;
extremely ;exceedingly . - interjection slang, chiefly N CA
For sure ;totally ; hell yeah; used as a strong affirmation of something that was just said, accomplished, or revealed.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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I will trade in fog for sun, espresso for straight black organic coffee slush, and I will make every best effort to drop the word hella every other sentence.
shrimp Rachel Cohn 2005
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I will trade in fog for sun, espresso for straight black organic coffee slush, and I will make every best effort to drop the word hella every other sentence.
shrimp Rachel Cohn 2005
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I will trade in fog for sun, espresso for straight black organic coffee slush, and I will make every best effort to drop the word hella every other sentence.
shrimp Rachel Cohn 2005
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I will trade in fog for sun, espresso for straight black organic coffee slush, and I will make every best effort to drop the word hella every other sentence.
shrimp Rachel Cohn 2005
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Connoisseurs of slang won't be shocked that Northern Californians text "hella" a lot an expression of enthusiasm.
Week in Ideas Christopher Shea 2011
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With San Franciscans who have a distaste for the notorious Los Angeles traffic jams and Angelinos who shiver just thinking about fog, the rivalry between the two regions becomes comedic with a "hella" here and a "like" there.
Lauren Selman: Art Bridges the Great Divide Lauren Selman 2011
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At Google, software engineers, who are accustomed to planting "Easter eggs" -- hidden delights -- in their programs, got wind of "hella" through one of Sendek's friends and installed it in the service's calculator.
A Hella Campaign: UC Davis Student Lobbies For 'Hella' To Be Used As Scientific Term 2010
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Sendek, 20, has petitioned the Consultative Committee on Units (a subdivision of the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures) to use "hella" to describe the rarely cited quantity of 10 to the 27th power.
A Hella Campaign: UC Davis Student Lobbies For 'Hella' To Be Used As Scientific Term 2010
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Or maybe, the adult who doesn't know what "hella" means gets hopelessly ragged on.
SeeLight: 2008
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If UC Davis student Austin Sendek has his way, the word "hella" will get its due -- in science.
A Hella Campaign: UC Davis Student Lobbies For 'Hella' To Be Used As Scientific Term 2010
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With the annual volume of data generated globally having already hit zettabytes, informal suggestions for 1027 — including ‘hella’ and ‘bronto’ — were starting to take hold, he says.
How many yottabytes in a quettabyte? Extreme numbers get new names Elizabeth Gibney 2023
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But the problem with hella and bronto is that their symbols (h and b) are already used in the metric system for other units or prefixes: h, for example, stands for hecto (the rarely used 102) and H is the henry, the unit of inductance.
How many yottabytes in a quettabyte? Extreme numbers get new names Elizabeth Gibney 2023
mager commented on the word hella
They say, it's NorCal.
April 19, 2008
dbcorbin commented on the word hella
Slang word from Northern California meaning big, impressive, stunning.
"he's got hella bank" Very rich
"She's hella hot" Hot,hot, hot!
June 10, 2009