Hella is an American English slang term originating in and often associated with San Francisco's East Bay area in northern California, possibly specifically emerging in the 1970s African-American vernacular of Oakland.[1][2] It is used as an intensifying adverb such as in "hella bad" or "hella good". It was eventually added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2002, citing a 1987 first use in the Toronto Star.[2][3] It is possibly a contraction of the phrase "hell of a" or "hell of a lot [of]", in turn reduced to "hell of",[3] though some scholars doubt this etymology since its grammatical usage does not align with those phrases; or of "hellacious".[2] It often appears in place of the words "really", "a lot", "totally", "very", and in some cases, "yes". Whereas hell of a is generally used with a noun, according to linguist Pamela Munro, hella is primarily used to modify an adjective such as "good".[4]
According to lexicographer Allan A. Metcalf, the word is a marker of northern California dialect.[5] According to Colleen Cotter, "Southern Californians know the term ... but rarely use it." Sometimes the term grippa is used to mock "NorCal" dialect, with the actual meaning being the opposite of hella.[clarification needed][6]
- ^ Boboc, Wellesley (April 2016). To Hella and Back: A Syntactic Analysis of hella in Dialects of American English (PDF) (Senior honors thesis (undergraduate)). New York University. p. 11.
- ^ a b c Eghan, Adizah (November 17, 2016). "The Origins of 'Hella'". KQED.
- ^ a b "hella, adv. and adj.". Oxford English Dictionary (Third ed.). Oxford University Press. 2002.
- ^ "Campus Slang". Voice of America. December 19, 2002. Retrieved February 13, 2008.
- ^ Allan A. Metcalf (2000). How We Talk: American Regional English Today. Houghton Mifflin Reference Books. ISBN 0-618-04362-4.
- ^ Colleen Cotter (2001). USA Phrasebook. Lonely Planet. ISBN 978-1-86450-182-7.