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say it: HEL-ish
hellish is an adjective meaning "(informal) very unpleasant". It is pronounced /ˈhɛlɪʃ/ — HEL-ish. It carries 2 recorded senses.
(informal) very unpleasant
“hellish weather”
“stop that god-awful racket”
colloquialism
extremely evil or cruel; expressive of cruelty or befitting hell
“something demonic in him--something that could be cruel”
“fires lit up a diabolic scene”
“diabolical sorcerers under the influence of devils”
“a fiendish despot”
“hellish torture”
“infernal instruments of war”
“satanic cruelty”
“unholy grimaces”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for hellish come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.