See hell-for-leather on Wiktionary
{
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"etymology_text": "An early reference is from 1888 in \"The Gadsbys\" by Rudyard Kipling, referring to the effect on the leather of a saddle (or perhaps a crop) of riding a horse as fast as possible.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "hell for leather",
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"pos": "adv",
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"examples": [
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8,
24
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],
"text": "He rode hell-for-leather to catch up with the stagecoach.",
"type": "example"
},
{
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115,
131
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"ref": "1888, Rudyard Kipling, “The Valley of the Shadow—Knowing Good and Evil”, in The Story of the Gadsbys:",
"text": "Captain Mafflin: Leave him alone. It's not bad enough to croak over. Here, Gaddy, take the chit to Bingle and ride hell-for-leather. It'll do you good. I can't go.",
"type": "quotation"
},
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"ref": "1999 December, Karen Duke, quoting the director of a drug agency, “Containing contradictions: the development of prison drugs policy in England since 1980.”, in Middlesex University Research Repository, archived from the original on 21 Mar 2026:",
"text": "Some of the commissioning decisions that they have taken look like they have not paid sufficient regard to the development of services in the community. This hell-for-leather search for abstinence - they thought that they could eradicate the drug problem within prisons by running a few programmes and detox units ... the first tranche of service development was very much based around that.",
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"ref": "2019 June 19, “This is Trevor.” (12:40 from the start), in Taskmaster, season 8, episode 7, spoken by a contestant (Paul Sinha):",
"text": "You see, the temptation is to stick at one. The temptation is to assume that the others will go hell-for-leather trying to accumulate as many pink ladies as possible and eventually have the green egg.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"As fast as possible; recklessly fast."
],
"id": "en-hell-for-leather-en-adv-cPKfd4lt",
"links": [
[
"fast",
"fast"
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"related": [
{
"word": "hell-bent for leather"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "like a bat out of hell"
}
],
"tags": [
"not-comparable"
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"lang_code": "hu",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "mint a szélvész"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"lang_code": "hu",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "szélvészként"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"lang_code": "hu",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "szélvészgyorsan"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"lang_code": "hu",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "lóhalálában"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"lang_code": "hu",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "mint a villám"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"lang_code": "hu",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "észvesztő/eszeveszett sebességgel"
},
{
"code": "nb",
"lang": "Norwegian Bokmål",
"lang_code": "nb",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "fort som faen"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"lang_code": "pl",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "na złamanie karku"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"lang_code": "ru",
"roman": "slomjá gólovu",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "сломя́ го́лову"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"lang_code": "ru",
"roman": "stremgláv",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "стремгла́в"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"lang_code": "es",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "a matacaballo"
}
]
}
],
"word": "hell-for-leather"
}
{
"etymology_links": [
[
"crop",
"crop"
]
],
"etymology_text": "An early reference is from 1888 in \"The Gadsbys\" by Rudyard Kipling, referring to the effect on the leather of a saddle (or perhaps a crop) of riding a horse as fast as possible.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "hell for leather",
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"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "adv",
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{
"word": "hell-bent for leather"
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],
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115,
131
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"ref": "1888, Rudyard Kipling, “The Valley of the Shadow—Knowing Good and Evil”, in The Story of the Gadsbys:",
"text": "Captain Mafflin: Leave him alone. It's not bad enough to croak over. Here, Gaddy, take the chit to Bingle and ride hell-for-leather. It'll do you good. I can't go.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
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[
158,
174
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],
"ref": "1999 December, Karen Duke, quoting the director of a drug agency, “Containing contradictions: the development of prison drugs policy in England since 1980.”, in Middlesex University Research Repository, archived from the original on 21 Mar 2026:",
"text": "Some of the commissioning decisions that they have taken look like they have not paid sufficient regard to the development of services in the community. This hell-for-leather search for abstinence - they thought that they could eradicate the drug problem within prisons by running a few programmes and detox units ... the first tranche of service development was very much based around that.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
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96,
112
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"ref": "2019 June 19, “This is Trevor.” (12:40 from the start), in Taskmaster, season 8, episode 7, spoken by a contestant (Paul Sinha):",
"text": "You see, the temptation is to stick at one. The temptation is to assume that the others will go hell-for-leather trying to accumulate as many pink ladies as possible and eventually have the green egg.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"As fast as possible; recklessly fast."
],
"links": [
[
"fast",
"fast"
]
],
"tags": [
"not-comparable"
]
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "like a bat out of hell"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"lang_code": "hu",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "mint a szélvész"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"lang_code": "hu",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "szélvészként"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"lang_code": "hu",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "szélvészgyorsan"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"lang_code": "hu",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "lóhalálában"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"lang_code": "hu",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "mint a villám"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"lang_code": "hu",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "észvesztő/eszeveszett sebességgel"
},
{
"code": "nb",
"lang": "Norwegian Bokmål",
"lang_code": "nb",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "fort som faen"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"lang_code": "pl",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "na złamanie karku"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"lang_code": "ru",
"roman": "slomjá gólovu",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "сломя́ го́лову"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"lang_code": "ru",
"roman": "stremgláv",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "стремгла́в"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"lang_code": "es",
"sense": "as fast as possible; recklessly fast",
"word": "a matacaballo"
}
],
"word": "hell-for-leather"
}
Download raw JSONL data for hell-for-leather meaning in All languages combined (4.3kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-10-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-09-02 using wiktextract (1a05e46 and e3d6d4e). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
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