Word.ws English Dictionary

hell-for-leather

hell-for-leather adverb: as fast as possible; recklessly fast.

Adverb

hell-for-leather (not comparable)

  1. As fast as possible; recklessly fast.
    • He rode hell-for-leather to catch up with the stagecoach.
    • Captain Mafflin: Leave him alone. It's not bad enough to croak over. Here, Gaddy, take the chit to Bingle and ride hell-for-leather. It'll do you good. I can't go.1888, Rudyard Kipling, “The Valley of the Shadow—Knowing Good and Evil”, in The Story of the Gadsbys

Synonyms of hell-for-leather

Forms of hell-for-leather

alternative formhell for leather

Origin of hell-for-leather

An early reference is from 1888 in "The Gadsbys" by Rudyard Kipling, referring to the effect on the leather of a saddle (or perhaps a crop) of riding a horse as fast as possible.

Questions about hell-for-leather

What does hell-for-leather mean?
Hell-for-leather means as fast as possible; recklessly fast.
What part of speech is hell-for-leather?
Hell-for-leather is an adverb.

Words near hell-for-leather in the dictionary

  1. hell-bent-for-leather
  2. hell-born
  3. hell-brewed
  4. hell-diver
  5. hell-divers
  6. hell-for-leather
  7. hell-hole
  8. hell-holes
  9. hell-hound
  10. hell-hounds
  11. hell-raiser

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hell-for-leather (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “hell-for-leather.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hell-for-leather. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.