living hell

living hell

An extremely unpleasant situation. She described her marriage to her alcoholic husband as a living hell. So many bad things happened to me that year that it was a living hell.
See also: hell, living
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

a living hell

COMMON If a situation or a place is a living hell, it is extremely unpleasant. School is a living hell for some children. Their marriage had become a living hell.
See also: hell, living
Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed.

living hell, a

A condition or place of acute misery and distress. This expression uses hell in the sense of the afterworld’s place of eternal torment. “Even after the divorce was final, he made her life a living hell.” Also put as hell on earth, it appears in such contexts as “Jungle warfare is a true hell on earth.”
See also: living
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer
See also:
  • come to a bad end
  • come to a bad/sticky end
  • horse and rabbit stew
  • a sad state (of affairs)
  • a sorry state (of affairs)
  • be a fate worse than death
  • he that would go to sea for pleasure would go to hell for a pastime
  • He that would go to sea for pleasure, would go to hell for a pastime
  • go from bad to worse
  • from bad to worse
References in periodicals archive
Standing on the steps outside the court, Sally Dowler said: "I hope that whilst he is in prison, he is treated with the same brutality he dealt his victims and that his life is a living hell."
When Sipowicz, a recovering alcoholic, went off the wagon after his son was murdered, he faced certain and complete ruin, a living hell. His partner, Bobby Simone, tried one last time to reach him.
Between 7 and 9 each morning he supposedly made her life a "living hell."
It was followed by The Room (1971), the monologue of an imprisoned psychopath and his fantasies of revenge; The Demon (1976), the story of a sexually obsessed executive; and Requiem for a Dream (1978), about the living hell of four drug addicts.
He observed that India, led by Modi, was no less than a living hell for the religious minorities.
Karl Riley, 32, says his life has been 'living hell' since his Employment Support Allowance [ESA] and housing benefit were slashed after he moved back in with his fiancee.
Instant death was their claim to fame As the order over the top came Over a hundred thousand died that very first day Onlookers soon realised their future was grey About a hundred yards to the barbed wire Before the Germans opened up with machine gun fire Men were dead before they fell Without a scream a shout or a yell For days months and years on end They continually lost compatriots and friends Soldiers shot and hospitalised Were more fortunate than they could ever realise Without doubt trench warfare was a living hell Few survivors lived to tell GEORGE MCLANDERS
Neighbours said he would play "excessively loud" drum and bass and guitar solos - making their lives a living hell.
Furious locals say drivers of heavy lorries are ignoring Highways' erected diversion signs when roadworks are in place on the A38 and A5 and are instead using Birmingham Road and Trent Valley Road as a rat run, creating a "living hell".
THIS weekend Thomas and Helen O'Driscoll must be enduring a living hell as they prepare to bury their three sons Patrick, Thomas and Jonathan.
A FORMER teacher told of "a living hell" after being accused of sex abuse at a Brighouse school.
These families have made our communities a living hell where people have actually moved from areas of this town to try and get away from the crime and anti-social behaviour.
The best we can hope for him is that he spends the rest of his life incarcerated where his life is a living hell, being the recipient of all evils, deprivations and degradations that his situation can provide."
Hundreds of rioters have showed their hateful rage as they make life a living hell for their neighbours.
A woman found guilty of murder after giving her brain-damaged son a lethal heroin injection to end his "living hell" has lost an appeal against conviction.