to feel like hell
- idiom
- Informal
- After staying up all night, I really feel like hell today.
- feel like hell in the morning
- gonna feel like hell
A drunk, insecure man will make everybody around him feel like hell.
- A drunk, insecure man will make everybody around him feel like hell.
- It will be hellishly bad work, he wrote, so for once I won't have a chance to worry and feel like hell all summer.
- I mean, talk about a film that knocks you on your ass and granted, makes you feel like hell, but that's the point.
- And I felt like I somehow I felt like hell.
Examples
-
I feel like hell.
-
I woke up this morning and felt like hell due to a bad cold.
-
Hey, dude, I feel like hell.
-
I already feel like hell.
-
But I felt like hell.
-
I should feel like hell.
-
I just feel like hell!
-
This feels like hell.
-
"I feel like hell."
Fiction book (1990) -
I felt like hell.
Fiction book (1990)
Synonyms
To feel pain or be ill
To have a very hard and painful time in life
Antonyms
How Miserable
Surface Forms
Morphology
The pattern 'feel like X' (= 'feel as if X') combined with 'hell' (intense suffering) yields a straightforward metaphorical comparison: 'feel as if in hell' → feel extremely unwell or miserable. Although slightly colloquial and metaphorical, the meaning is directly inferable from the constituents and the comparison pattern is common, so a B1 learner who knows the words will likely understand it.
Etymology
Feel like hell comes from the image of hell as a place of strong pain and suffering. So to feel like hell means 'to feel very unwell' or 'to feel extremely miserable'.