hellfire

• hell-fire

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”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈhɛlˌfaɪə/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈhɛlˌfaɪəɹ/

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.

• sometimes capitalized, hyphenated, or both: Hellfire, hell-fire, Hell-fire; also as fires of hell

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 […] ‎, London: Longmans, Green & Co.:

     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.

• fire and brimstone
• purgatory

hellfire

1. hell; damn; blast