"hell's bells" meaning in English

See hell's bells in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Interjection

IPA: /ˌhɛlz ˈbɛlz/ [General-American, Received-Pronunciation]
Etymology: From hell + -’s + bells, possibly an elaboration of hell (“used to express anger, discontent, or unhappiness”) with bells chosen to rhyme with hell’s. The noun sense (Datura stramonium) may allude to the often spiny seed capsules of the poisonous plant which somewhat resemble bells when they mature and split open; compare devil's cucumber, devil's snare, devil's trumpet, and devil's weed which are other common names for the plant. Etymology templates: {{compound|en|hell|-'s|bells|alt2=-’s}} hell + -’s + bells, {{m|en|hell|t=used to express anger, discontent, or unhappiness}} hell (“used to express anger, discontent, or unhappiness”), {{taxfmt|Datura stramonium|species}} Datura stramonium, {{vern|devil's snare}} devil's snare, {{vern|devil's weed}} devil's weed Head templates: {{en-interj|head=hell's bells}} hell's bells
  1. (mildly vulgar) An expression of frustration, outrage, or surprise. Tags: mildly, vulgar Synonyms: dammit, hell's teeth, wow Translations (expression of frustration, outrage, or surprise): porca misèria (Catalan), puta misèria (Catalan), quina misèria (Catalan), porca miseria (Italian), porca puttana (Italian), porca troia (Italian)
    Sense id: en-hell's_bells-en-intj-4aVnyr0h

Noun

IPA: /ˌhɛlz ˈbɛlz/ [General-American, Received-Pronunciation]
Etymology: From hell + -’s + bells, possibly an elaboration of hell (“used to express anger, discontent, or unhappiness”) with bells chosen to rhyme with hell’s. The noun sense (Datura stramonium) may allude to the often spiny seed capsules of the poisonous plant which somewhat resemble bells when they mature and split open; compare devil's cucumber, devil's snare, devil's trumpet, and devil's weed which are other common names for the plant. Etymology templates: {{compound|en|hell|-'s|bells|alt2=-’s}} hell + -’s + bells, {{m|en|hell|t=used to express anger, discontent, or unhappiness}} hell (“used to express anger, discontent, or unhappiness”), {{taxfmt|Datura stramonium|species}} Datura stramonium, {{vern|devil's snare}} devil's snare, {{vern|devil's weed}} devil's weed Head templates: {{en-noun|p|head=hell's bells}} hell's bells pl (plural only)
  1. Jimsonweed (Datura stramonium). Tags: plural, plural-only Categories (lifeform): Daturas
    Sense id: en-hell's_bells-en-noun-OXybmX9U Disambiguation of Daturas: 19 81 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with language name categories using raw markup, English entries with topic categories using raw markup, English pluralia tantum, English reduplications, English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 41 59 Disambiguation of English entries with language name categories using raw markup: 29 71 Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 22 78 Disambiguation of English pluralia tantum: 25 75 Disambiguation of English reduplications: 25 75 Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 27 73

Download JSON data for hell's bells meaning in English (6.0kB)

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      "args": {
        "1": "devil's weed"
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  "etymology_text": "From hell + -’s + bells, possibly an elaboration of hell (“used to express anger, discontent, or unhappiness”) with bells chosen to rhyme with hell’s.\nThe noun sense (Datura stramonium) may allude to the often spiny seed capsules of the poisonous plant which somewhat resemble bells when they mature and split open; compare devil's cucumber, devil's snare, devil's trumpet, and devil's weed which are other common names for the plant.",
  "head_templates": [
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      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "(expression of frustration):"
        },
        {
          "text": "(expression of surprise):"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1932, Edgar Wallace, Merian C[aldwell] Cooper, novelization by Delos W[heeler] Lovelace, chapter 1, in King Kong, trade softcover edition, Nevada City, Calif.: Underwood Books, published 2005, page 6",
          "text": "\"You've never had a woman in any of your other pictures. Why do you want one for this?\" / \"Hell's Bells! You don't think I'm consulting my own preference, I hope.\"",
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        ],
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        "(mildly vulgar) An expression of frustration, outrage, or surprise."
      ],
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        {
          "word": "dammit"
        },
        {
          "word": "hell's teeth"
        },
        {
          "word": "wow"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
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      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "ca",
          "lang": "Catalan",
          "sense": "expression of frustration, outrage, or surprise",
          "word": "porca misèria"
        },
        {
          "code": "ca",
          "lang": "Catalan",
          "sense": "expression of frustration, outrage, or surprise",
          "word": "puta misèria"
        },
        {
          "code": "ca",
          "lang": "Catalan",
          "sense": "expression of frustration, outrage, or surprise",
          "word": "quina misèria"
        },
        {
          "code": "it",
          "lang": "Italian",
          "sense": "expression of frustration, outrage, or surprise",
          "word": "porca miseria"
        },
        {
          "code": "it",
          "lang": "Italian",
          "sense": "expression of frustration, outrage, or surprise",
          "word": "porca puttana"
        },
        {
          "code": "it",
          "lang": "Italian",
          "sense": "expression of frustration, outrage, or surprise",
          "word": "porca troia"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
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      "ipa": "/ˌhɛlz ˈbɛlz/",
      "tags": [
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        "Received-Pronunciation"
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    }
  ],
  "word": "hell's bells"
}

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  "etymology_text": "From hell + -’s + bells, possibly an elaboration of hell (“used to express anger, discontent, or unhappiness”) with bells chosen to rhyme with hell’s.\nThe noun sense (Datura stramonium) may allude to the often spiny seed capsules of the poisonous plant which somewhat resemble bells when they mature and split open; compare devil's cucumber, devil's snare, devil's trumpet, and devil's weed which are other common names for the plant.",
  "head_templates": [
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          "kind": "lifeform",
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        "Jimsonweed (Datura stramonium)."
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  "word": "hell's bells"
}
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    "English reduplications",
    "English rhyming phrases",
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  "etymology_text": "From hell + -’s + bells, possibly an elaboration of hell (“used to express anger, discontent, or unhappiness”) with bells chosen to rhyme with hell’s.\nThe noun sense (Datura stramonium) may allude to the often spiny seed capsules of the poisonous plant which somewhat resemble bells when they mature and split open; compare devil's cucumber, devil's snare, devil's trumpet, and devil's weed which are other common names for the plant.",
  "head_templates": [
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "intj",
  "senses": [
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      "categories": [
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      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "(expression of frustration):"
        },
        {
          "text": "(expression of surprise):"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1932, Edgar Wallace, Merian C[aldwell] Cooper, novelization by Delos W[heeler] Lovelace, chapter 1, in King Kong, trade softcover edition, Nevada City, Calif.: Underwood Books, published 2005, page 6",
          "text": "\"You've never had a woman in any of your other pictures. Why do you want one for this?\" / \"Hell's Bells! You don't think I'm consulting my own preference, I hope.\"",
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      ],
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        ],
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          "surprise",
          "surprise#Noun"
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        "(mildly vulgar) An expression of frustration, outrage, or surprise."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
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          "word": "dammit"
        },
        {
          "word": "hell's teeth"
        },
        {
          "word": "wow"
        }
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      "tags": [
        "mildly",
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  "sounds": [
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      "tags": [
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        "Received-Pronunciation"
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  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "ca",
      "lang": "Catalan",
      "sense": "expression of frustration, outrage, or surprise",
      "word": "porca misèria"
    },
    {
      "code": "ca",
      "lang": "Catalan",
      "sense": "expression of frustration, outrage, or surprise",
      "word": "puta misèria"
    },
    {
      "code": "ca",
      "lang": "Catalan",
      "sense": "expression of frustration, outrage, or surprise",
      "word": "quina misèria"
    },
    {
      "code": "it",
      "lang": "Italian",
      "sense": "expression of frustration, outrage, or surprise",
      "word": "porca miseria"
    },
    {
      "code": "it",
      "lang": "Italian",
      "sense": "expression of frustration, outrage, or surprise",
      "word": "porca puttana"
    },
    {
      "code": "it",
      "lang": "Italian",
      "sense": "expression of frustration, outrage, or surprise",
      "word": "porca troia"
    }
  ],
  "word": "hell's bells"
}

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    "English rhyming phrases",
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  "etymology_text": "From hell + -’s + bells, possibly an elaboration of hell (“used to express anger, discontent, or unhappiness”) with bells chosen to rhyme with hell’s.\nThe noun sense (Datura stramonium) may allude to the often spiny seed capsules of the poisonous plant which somewhat resemble bells when they mature and split open; compare devil's cucumber, devil's snare, devil's trumpet, and devil's weed which are other common names for the plant.",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
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    {
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        "Jimsonweed (Datura stramonium)."
      ],
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      "tags": [
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    }
  ],
  "word": "hell's bells"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). 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.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.