helly

English

Etymology

From Middle English helly, hellic, from Old English hellīċ (“of hell, hellish, infernal”), equivalent to hell +‎ -y.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ɛli

Adjective

helly (comparative more helly, superlative most helly)

1. (obsolete) Hellish, infernal.
   • '1603, Samuel Harsnet, “A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures, quoted in 2013'”, in Shakespeare's England: Life in Elizabethan & Jacobean Times, →ISBN:

     These monster-swarms his Holiness and his helly crew have scraped and raked together out of old doting historiographers, wizardising augurs, imposturing soothsayers, dreaming poets, chimerical conceiters, and coiners of fables, […] .

   • 1892, Theodore Sydney Vaughn, Satan in Arms Against Columbus, page 138:

     Then wavered all the rebel rings, And of a sudden, ere a single blow Was struck, precipitous they shrieking fled, And sought the portals of their Helly home.

Related terms

• rakehelly
• what the helly

References

• “helly”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.