Entry · catalog no. 1005
hella
/ /
adverb · Bay Area / Oakland ·
✓ Verified
1.
Very; a lot of. An intensifier that scales to anything — hella good, hella far, hella people.
“It's hella cold by the water tonight.”
Origin & Attribution
East Bay youth speech of the late 1970s, with scholars pointing to Black Oakland as the source before it spread across every demographic in Northern California. A Bay Area signature that never needed the internet's permission.
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Bay Area / Oakland ·
Spoken by
$HELLAThe Record · cultural traction
▲ 26 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
60/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Geoff Nunberg, Bay Area slang commentary (Fresh Air / UC Berkeley) — radio segment · 2015
submitted
■
+ Cite a sourceKQED News, "The Origins of Hella" — article · 2017
submitted
See also