Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

hell-for-leather

Word Rarity Uncommon

Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.28 in modern English

Syllables: hel-l--for-leather
IPA

23

Scrabble Score

14

Letters

5

Syllables

8

Unique Chars

Meaning

adv

As fast as possible; recklessly fast.

Example Sentences

"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."
"Some of the commissioning decisions that they have taken look like they have not paid sufficient regard to the development of services in the community. This hell-for-leather search for abstinence - they thought that they could eradicate the drug problem within prisons by running a few programmes and detox units ... the first tranche of service development was very much based around that."
"You see, the temptation is to stick at one. The temptation is to assume that the others will go hell-for-leather trying to accumulate as many pink ladies as possible and eventually have the green egg."

Etymology

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.

Inflected Forms

hell for leather (alternative)

Phrases

hell-bent for leather

Frequently Paired Words

hell-bent for leather

Synonyms

like a bat out of hell

Questions

What does hell-for-leather mean?: As fast as possible; recklessly fast.
Where does hell-for-leather come from?: 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.

How to pronounce hell-for-leather

Open the pronunciation page — Open the Speakur entry for “hell-for-leather”.
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