infernon.
/ɪnˈfəːnəʊ/, U.S. /ᵻnˈfərnoʊ/ Hell; a place of torment or misery compared to hell; a place likened in some respect to the Inferno of Dante's Divine Comedy.
ΘΚΠ
the world > the supernatural > deity > hell > [noun]
helleOE
hellOE
perditiona1382
perishingc1384
welling woea1400
hellwardc1400
Topheta1425
gehenne1481
to devilwardc1550
limbo1581
Averna1592
Hades1597
Sheol1599
other place1604
underworld1608
infernals1613
gehenna1623
lower world1639
netherworld1640
pandemonium1667
subterrenea1711
diablerie1776
inferno1834
ballyhooly1837
nether region1839
Sam Hill1839
Ballyhack1843
tunket1871
bogydom1880
1834 T. Medwin Angler in Wales I. 24 The passage to what some, who attribute to Byron a cloven foot, might call his inferno.
1839 T. Carlyle Chartism iv. 35 This black unluminous unheeded Inferno, and Prisonhouse of souls in pain.
1888 J. Ruskin Præterita III. i. 27 Rossetti..was really not an Englishman, but a great Italian tormented in the Inferno of London.
Draft additions December 2018
a. A large, intense fire, esp. one that is dangerously out of control.
ΘΚΠ
the world > matter > properties of materials > temperature > heat > burning > a fire > [noun] > a kind of fire > immense
baleOE
bale-firec1400
balowe-firec1430
Mongibel1632
inferno1894
1894 Boston Daily Globe 16 May 3/7 Tremont St..seemed a raging inferno, from which the firemen were fortunate to have escaped with their lives.
1940 Life 30 Sept. 55/1 It can be ignited by..exhaust sparks or electrical contacts and turn a combat plane into a cometing inferno.
1963 W. S. Howard Amer. Slavers & Federal Law ii. 28 Behind them an inferno broke out. The bark's deck timbers blazed.
1991 Newsweek 11 Mar. 36/3 The occupiers set 600 of the country's 950 oil wells ablaze, a smoky inferno that created dusk at noon.
2017 Sun (Nexis) 31 July 36 It takes a special person to go into a raging inferno to save lives while risking their own.
b. figurative and in figurative contexts. Something likened to a large fire, esp. in being overwhelmingly fierce, violent, intense, etc.
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1898 News & Observer (Raleigh, N. Carolina) 9 Nov. (Last ed.) 1/1 Tin horns, squeedunks, and pans took up the chorus until the street was an inferno of noise.
1910 Daily Mail 13 June 2/1 If she but knew what an inferno of passion she had aroused, her answer would be the refusal of his suit.
1997 Church Times 28 Feb. 16/2 A week in which a row turned into an inferno.
2006 Icon May Introd. 11 Architects and designers no longer provide for our needs but for our wants, fuelling the inferno of human consumption that is overwhelming the planet's life-support systems.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1900; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1834