to go to heck
1
8.2
- phrasal verb
- Informal
:
vete al diablo
- I got so frustrated with the negative comments that I told them all to go to heck.
Examples
-
You and your stupid, stupid sky-fi show can go to heck!
-
When he wouldn't stop bothering her, she finally told him to just go to heck.
-
After the argument, she told her friend to go to heck and leave her alone.
Synonyms
67
9.5
Tell someone angrily that you do not care about them
38
9.9
Tell someone angrily to go away and that you will not accept their idea
37
9.9
A rude way to tell someone to go away and show strong anger
26
8.9
Angrily tell someone to go away and never come back
12
9.9
Tell someone to go away immediately in a rude way
1
9.5
To tell someone rudely to leave
1
9.9
Tell someone to leave in a rude, angry way
Angrily tell someone to go away
Rudely say to someone that you want them to go away
A rude joking way to tell someone to go away without meaning it
Antonyms
How Dismissive
- Offensive
67
9.5
- Informal
1
8.2
- Informal
1
6.3
709
1.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
The form follows the transparent syntactic pattern 'go to [place]' (go + to + noun), but 'heck' is a euphemistic expletive substituting for 'hell' and carries an idiomatic, insulting force rather than a literal destination. A B1 learner who knows the words might infer a basic sense of dismissal if they recognise 'heck' as a mild stand-in for 'hell', but the evaluative/insulting meaning depends on cultural/idiomatic knowledge, so it is not fully predictable from the parts.
Etymology
Go to heck comes from the stronger insult 'go to hell' and uses the softer word heck instead of 'hell'. That change makes it a mild way to tell someone to 'go away' or show anger without using strong swear words.