hellfire

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English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle English helle fire, helever, from Old English hellefȳr, equivalent to hell +‎ fire. Cognate with West Frisian helfjoer (“hellfire”), Dutch hellevuur (“hellfire”), German Höllenfeuer (“hellfire”).

Pronunciation

Noun

hellfire (countable and uncountable, plural hellfires)

  1. (uncountable) The fire of Hell.
  2. (uncountable) Fire produced by the Devil, or a similar supernatural creature connected to Hell.
  3. (countable) A fire that burns with unusual heat or ferocity.
  4. (countable, military) Ellipsis of AGM-114 Hellfire.

Alternative forms

Translations

Adjective

hellfire (comparative more hellfire, superlative most hellfire)

  1. Of or relating to a violent, apocalyptic and ultimate day of reckoning and judgment; usually characterizing a form of Christian preaching.
    • 1902, William James, “Lectures 4 & 5”, in The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature , New York, N.Y.; London: Longmans, Green, and Co. , →OCLC:
      The advance of liberalism, so-called, in Christianity, during the past fifty years, may fairly be called a victory of healthy-mindedness within the church over the morbidness with which the old hell-fire theology was more harmoniously related.
    • 2005, Sang Hyun Lee, The Princeton Companion to Jonathan Edwards, University of Princeton Press, page 253:
      Sermons such as The Eternity of Hell Torments and The Future Punishment of the Wicked Unavoidable and Intolerable, as well as several manuscript examples, serve to mark the distinction between a true hellfire sermon and the proto-eschatological concerns of Sinners [in the Hands of an Angry God], consumed as it is with the here and now.

See also

Interjection

hellfire

  1. hell; damn; blast
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