helly
nounEtymology From hell + -y
- Related terms
- rakehelly, what the helly, the helly
helly
adj/ˈhɛ.li/
Etymology From Middle English helly, hellic, from Old English hellīċ (“of hell, hellish, infernal”), equivalent to hell + -y.
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: