[Ads-l] Hella research inquiry

[Ben Zimmer]

In a 2016 post, I shared two "hella" citations from 1986, one from a
magazine interview with James Hetfield of Metallica and one from lyrics by
the rapper Too $hort.

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2016-March/141400.html

I also posted a screenshot of the Hetfield interview on Twitter. (He
actually used "hella" twice: "I'm hella paranoid" and "Yeah, hella" in
response to "Does that scare you?")

https://twitter.com/bgzimmer/status/713000098276511744

--bgz

On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 3:50 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> For a student working at the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project, I’m
> wondering if anyone has any suggestions on early cites and history of
> “hella”.  OED and HDAS both have 1987 for the earliest cite, but I suspect
> that can now be antedated. At HDAS, Jon classifies it as a prefix but it’s
> clearly shed that restriction when used in frames like the attested “This
> chair reclines hella”, and I’d be inclined to go with the OED’s entry
> listing it as an adverb (“hella fast/smart/funny”) and adjective (“hella
> memory/pride/stairs”).  Our survey results are generally consistent with
> the widespread view that it’s a Californianism (although while the
> shibboleth still associates it with Northern California, that appears to no
> longer be true), while also showing that it’s expanded well beyond that.
> (DARE doesn’t have a separate entry, and just one cite, from Berkeley,
> within the entry for “tight”. In terms of etymology, can we go beyond the
> OED’s disjunctive suggestion, "Probably shortened < either helluva adj. or
> hellacious adj.”?  Is there any literature the student should check out?
> We’d be hella grateful!
>
>

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