A hellhole is a thoroughly wretched and unpleasant place. An absolute hellhole, a hellhole of a prison, that hellhole of a town.
It is strong, informal and always exaggerated except when it is not, and it is used most about prisons, camps and towns the speaker is glad to have left. It is written as one word and is first recorded in the nineteenth century.
1nounhellholeA thoroughly wretched and unpleasant place.
“The hostel was a filthy hellhole with broken windows and rats in the kitchen.”
hellhole is a place.
Hell plus hole, first recorded in 1866. Hell is Old English, from a root meaning to cover or conceal.
First recorded in 1866.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA