hell to pay

1. 1.

   dire consequences

   “when the pig ran away there was hell to pay”

   Broaderconsequence

Questions about hell to pay

What does hell to pay mean?

hell to pay means "dire consequences".

Is hell to pay a common word?

hell to pay 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.