hell gate en · NOUN
Pronunciation
- /ˈhɛl ɡeɪt/ (UK)
Etymology
From Middle English helle gate, helle-ȝate, from Old English helleġeat, corresponding to hell + gate.
Meanings
-
(uncountable) The entrance to hell, seen as an embodiment of evil.
A Tigre forth out of the wood did rise, / That with fell clawes full of fierce gourmandize, / And greedy mouth wide gaping like hell-gate, / Did runne at Pastorell her to surprize […].
1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:And now great deeds / Had been achieved, whereof all Hell had rung, / Had not the snaky Sorceress, that sat / Fast by Hell-gate and kept the fatal key, / Risen, and with hideous outcry rushed between.
1667, John Milton, “Book LI”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:Thine loves the same world that mine hates; / Thy heaven doors are my hell gates.
c. 1825, William Blake, The Everlasting Gospel: