hellfire
English
Alternative forms
- Sometimes capitalized, hyphenated, or both: Hellfire, hell-fire, Hell-fire; also as fires of hell
Etymology
Pronunciation
Noun
hellfire (countable and uncountable, plural hellfires)
- (uncountable) The fire of Hell.
- (uncountable) Fire produced by the Devil, or a similar supernatural creature connected to Hell.
- (countable) A fire that burns with unusual heat or ferocity.
Translations
fire of hell
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fire caused by the Devil
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intensive fire
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Adjective
hellfire (comparative more hellfire, superlative most hellfire)
- Or or relating to a violent, apocalyptic and ultimate day of reckoning and judgment; usually characterizing a form of Christian preaching.
- 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lectures 4 & 5:
- 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), p. 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.
- 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lectures 4 & 5: