Hella (word)

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For other uses, see Hella.

Hella is a slang intensifier word commonly used by young people in Northern California, but also elsewhere in the United States. It is believed to be a contraction of "Hell of a".^[1]

It often appears in place of the word "really", "a lot", "totally", 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".^[2]

According to lexicographer Allan A. Metcalf, the word is a marker of Northern California dialect, as well as the similar word "hecka".^[3] 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.^[4] A commentator at UC Davis notes that using the term in the presence of "SoCalers" can elicit a range of extreme reactions.^[5]

1 Earliest studies of the term
2 Nationwide spread
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Earliest studies of the term

One of the earliest linguists to study the term was Mary Bucholtz of the University of California, Santa Barbara. In the early 1990s, she collated materials from an urban high school in the Bay Area, and found that hella was "used among Bay Area youth of all racial, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds and both genders". It is a synonym of the slang meaning of wicked and mad. As it was not recognized as profanity, the students were able to use it repeatedly in production of the class yearbook. In Bucholtz's view, the term "signals an orientation to coolness". Although she notes the later national usage, she believes that is a largely urban fad (which peaked just before 2000 or 2001), but in California it will continue to be a "very stable regional marker".^[6] Bucholtz later directed^[7] an undergraduate project that was published in the Journal of English Linguistics in 2006 titled "Hella Nor Cal or Totally So Cal?: The Perceptual Dialectology of California".^[8]

[edit] Nationwide spread

By 1997, the word had spread to hip hop culture, though it remained a primarily West Coast term.^[9] With the release of the 2001 No Doubt song "Hella Good", one Virginian transplant in California "fear[ed] the worst: nationwide acceptance of this wretched term."^[10]

In the South Park episode Spookyfish, which was the 1998 Halloween special, the character Cartman repeatedly used the term hella to the annoyance of the other characters^[11], which contributed to its currency spreading nationally.^[12] "You guys are hella stupid" is one of the phrases spoken by a talking Cartman doll released in 2006.^[13] The Sacramento-based band Hella chose its name for the regional association; Zach Hill says "It's everywhere up here.... We thought it was funny, and everyone says it all the time."^[14]