Word.ws English Dictionary

helly

/ˈhɛ.li/

helly adjective: hellish, infernal.

Adjective

helly (comparative more helly, superlative most helly)

  1. (obsolete) Hellish, infernal.
    • 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, […].1603, Samuel Harsnet, A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures; quoted in Shakespeare's England: Life in Elizabethan & Jacobean Times, 2013, →ISBN
    • 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.1892, Theodore Sydney Vaughn, Satan in Arms Against Columbus, page 138

Noun

helly (comparative more helly, superlative most helly)

  1. (mildly, slang, vulgar) Synonym of hell.
    Synonyms:
    hell

Proper noun capitalized: Helly

Helly (countable and uncountable, plural Hellys)

  1. A surname from German, notably held by Eduard Helly.

Synonyms of helly

Forms of helly

Adjective
comparativemore helly
superlativemost helly
Noun
comparativemore helly
superlativemost helly
Proper noun
pluralHellys

Origin of helly

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

From hell + -y

Words formed from helly

Phrases with helly

Words that rhyme with helly

15 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about helly

What does helly mean?
Helly means hellish, infernal.
What part of speech is helly?
Helly can be an adjective, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce helly?
Helly is pronounced /ˈhɛ.li/.

Words near helly in the dictionary

  1. hellward
  2. hellwards
  3. hellweed
  4. Hellwig
  5. Hellwigs
  6. helly
  7. Helly dimension
  8. Helly dimensions
  9. Helly families
  10. Helly family
  11. Helly's selection theorem

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: helly (page history and authors); Helly (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-helly.wav.

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