as Hell

One peeve of sticklers for precise language is the colloquial comparison "as Hell". The two-word juggernaut originated from the phrase "as hot as Hell". In this original form, the latter portion provides a liturgical allusion to a thermometric evaluation. Many current uses of "as Hell" stray rather far from this proper, albeit narrow, invocation.

The formal dilemma arises from the type of language object "as Hell" becomes from improper use. When used correctly (see above), "as Hell" closes out a simile. There is one important aspect of this structure. While the definition states that a simile is a comparison of "two unlike things", it fails to capture that these things are not completely unlike one another. As many philosophers and linguists have stated, it is not the meaning of the individual words, but the relation of those meanings, that makes a simile (and a metaphor, for that matter) an ingenious linguistic structure. Aristotle in the Poetics waxed about the worth of metaphors (here extrapolated in essence for its core thought on abstract comparisons) saying "a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars." And here is the single facet in which improper use of "as Hell" destroys, namely the similarity of those disparate elements.

To base this in a concrete example, consider the phrase "(as) cold as Hell". While structuralists (and Cratylus) may argue for this differently, this statement is untrue, meaningless, and, above all else, nonsensical in its raw form. This begs the (naive) questions, "What is meant by this phrase?" Clearly, "as Hell" is enkindled as a superlative or, at least, phrase of universal comparative degree. This shift of structure provides a (sigh) metaphor for more gross misuses of language and its structures on the whole.

The generalization of a simile disengenders the purpose of the simile. This is to say, by misappropriating "as Hell" people are far more likely to conceive of similes as structures for a wholly different purpose. Rather than comparing some inuitive, transcent trait (as in "as hot as Hell" providing the reference of the current heat to the ultimate heat, and, I presume, the desire not to end up there), the simile is seen as a (again, sigh) metaphorical structure for comparitive degree. Saying "as cold as Hell" means "very, very cold" in that "as hot as Hell" means "very, very hot".

The devaluing of such (formal) structures lends to the claim made earlier that this narrow shift indicates a broader one. As for this broader trend, it will be revisited at a later date.