"helluva" meaning in English

See helluva in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Adjective

IPA: /ˈhɛləvə/ Audio: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-helluva.wav [Southern-England]
Etymology: Written form of a reduction (relaxed pronunciation) of hell of a. Etymology templates: {{m|en|hell of a}} hell of a Head templates: {{en-adj|-}} helluva (not comparable)
  1. (colloquial) (A) hell of a; extreme. Tags: colloquial, not-comparable
    Sense id: en-helluva-en-adj-aoNfhbQi Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Adverb

IPA: /ˈhɛləvə/ Audio: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-helluva.wav [Southern-England]
Etymology: Written form of a reduction (relaxed pronunciation) of hell of a. Etymology templates: {{m|en|hell of a}} hell of a Head templates: {{en-adv|-}} helluva (not comparable)
  1. (colloquial); (expletive) (A) hell of a; extremely or very. Tags: colloquial, not-comparable Derived forms: helluvalot Related terms: hella, helluv, heckuva Translations (very, intense, intensely): sjujäkla (Swedish), sjujävla (Swedish)
    Sense id: en-helluva-en-adv-hgJSICDX Categories (other): English entries with language name categories using raw markup, English eye dialect Disambiguation of English entries with language name categories using raw markup: 40 60 Disambiguation of English eye dialect: 15 85

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for helluva meaning in English (3.5kB)

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  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "hell of a"
      },
      "expansion": "hell of a",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Written form of a reduction (relaxed pronunciation) of hell of a.",
  "head_templates": [
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adj",
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          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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        {
          "text": "They had a helluva row over where to spend the weekend.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "text": "Where were you? - Lost in Paris. - Wow! Helluva place to get lost!",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "(A) hell of a; extreme."
      ],
      "id": "en-helluva-en-adj-aoNfhbQi",
      "links": [
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          "hell of a",
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(colloquial) (A) hell of a; extreme."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial",
        "not-comparable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈhɛləvə/"
    },
    {
      "audio": "LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-helluva.wav",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/7c/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-helluva.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-helluva.wav.mp3",
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      "tags": [
        "Southern-England"
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      "text": "Audio (Southern England)"
    }
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  "word": "helluva"
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{
  "etymology_templates": [
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      "args": {
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adv",
  "senses": [
    {
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          "word": "helluvalot"
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        {
          "text": "We had a helluva good time at the party.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "; (expletive) (A) hell of a; extremely or very."
      ],
      "id": "en-helluva-en-adv-hgJSICDX",
      "links": [
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          "hell",
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      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(colloquial); (expletive) (A) hell of a; extremely or very."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "hella"
        },
        {
          "word": "helluv"
        },
        {
          "word": "heckuva"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial",
        "not-comparable"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "sv",
          "lang": "Swedish",
          "sense": "very, intense, intensely",
          "word": "sjujäkla"
        },
        {
          "code": "sv",
          "lang": "Swedish",
          "sense": "very, intense, intensely",
          "word": "sjujävla"
        }
      ]
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  "sounds": [
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      "ipa": "/ˈhɛləvə/"
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      "tags": [
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    }
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  "word": "helluva"
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{
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    "English lemmas",
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  "lang_code": "en",
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          "text": "Where were you? - Lost in Paris. - Wow! Helluva place to get lost!",
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        "(A) hell of a; extreme."
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        "(colloquial) (A) hell of a; extreme."
      ],
      "tags": [
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        "not-comparable"
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  ],
  "sounds": [
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      "ipa": "/ˈhɛləvə/"
    },
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  "etymology_text": "Written form of a reduction (relaxed pronunciation) of hell of a.",
  "head_templates": [
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adv",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "hella"
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    {
      "word": "helluv"
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    {
      "word": "heckuva"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
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        "English terms with usage examples"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "We had a helluva good time at the party.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "; (expletive) (A) hell of a; extremely or very."
      ],
      "links": [
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        [
          "hell",
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        ],
        [
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      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(colloquial); (expletive) (A) hell of a; extremely or very."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial",
        "not-comparable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈhɛləvə/"
    },
    {
      "audio": "LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-helluva.wav",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/7c/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-helluva.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-helluva.wav.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/7c/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-helluva.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-helluva.wav.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Southern-England"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (Southern England)"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "sv",
      "lang": "Swedish",
      "sense": "very, intense, intensely",
      "word": "sjujäkla"
    },
    {
      "code": "sv",
      "lang": "Swedish",
      "sense": "very, intense, intensely",
      "word": "sjujävla"
    }
  ],
  "word": "helluva"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-17 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-01 using wiktextract (0b52755 and 5cb0836). 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.