hell-for-leather

1. 1.

   at breakneck speed

   “they were travelling hell-for-leather”

Questions about hell-for-leather

What does hell-for-leather mean?

hell-for-leather means "at breakneck speed".

How many syllables are in hell-for-leather?

hell-for-leather has 5 syllables and divides as hell--for--le-a-ther under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

Is hell-for-leather a common word?

hell-for-leather is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.