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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

give someone hell en · VERB

Meanings

  1. (idiomatic) To castigate someone; to dress them down.
    • He stopped calling me Space Barbie after Mike gave him hell last week. 2013, Suzanne Berube Rorhus, Elizabeth Hosang, Jack Bates, Moon Shot: Murder and Mayhem on the Edge of Space:
    • When the hospital called and told him Roberta was missing, Dr. Meducca gave them hell. 2016, Evelyn Piper, The Nanny:
    • I gave it off to her and then I stormed right over to her husband, my colleague, and gave him hell as well . 2011, Amrita Sharma, What Did I Ever See in Him?, page 154:
    • I gave him hell about his sloppy uniform ; but don't worry, I'll get him shaped up pretty damn quick . 2019, Don Neal, Warhead:
    • Near-synonym: raise hell
    • His boss really gave him hell when she found out that he'd been lying about filing the reports.
  2. To torment; To make miserable.
    • In the thirties, my cousin, Charley Gans, my brother Gershon and I "gave him hell" when he taught that garbage in our classes . 2010, Manfred Gans, Life Gave Me a Chance, page 273:
    • She's been giving me hell all week. 1992, Jo Sinclair, Anna Teller, page 345:
    • Yes, she desired to see Edward suffer. And, by God, she gave him hell . She gave him an unimaginable hell. 1915, Madox Ford, The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion, page 274:
    • These guys have been giving me hell all morning. 2018, Jillian Frost, Players Break Rules:
  3. To put up a fight against; to battle strongly and effectively.
    • Our gunners were temporarily knocked out by gas but soon recovered and gave them hell, which caught their first infantry rush, but they came on and advanced a mile and then their barrage slacked off a bit so as not to catch their own infantry. 2014, John Stevens, Caroline Stevens, Unknown Warriors:
    • A nickname of U.S. President Harry Truman was "Give-'em-Hell Harry" because he could really give them hell when he wanted to.
    • I had warned my staff and the reporters that I was going out to win the election. "I'm going to fight hard," I told Senator Barkley. "I'm going to give them hell." 1956 January 30, Harry S. Truman, “The Truman Memoirs: Fooling the '48 Forecasters”, in LIFE, volume 40, number 5, page 76:
    • Heine—the Canadians call their enemy Heine and not Fritz—"was at least three times as strong as us, and we gave him hell. It was hand-to-hand fighting —rifles, bombs, bayonets, butt ends —any old way of killing a man—"and we killed a lot. 1917, “The Desperate Fighting of the Canadians at Lens”, in The New York Times Current History, page 45:

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
gave someone hell Tense=Past lexicographic
gives someone hell Number=Sing, Person=3, Tense=Pres lexicographic
given someone hell Tense=Past, VerbForm=Part lexicographic
giving someone hell Tense=Pres, VerbForm=Part lexicographic

Coordinates

put through the wringer · put through the mill · put through the mangle · put someone through their paces

Relateds

hellraiser

Synonyms

raise hell