Green’s Dictionary of Slang

Hades n.

a euph. for hell, in all senses.

1879		Sporting Times 29 Mar. 1/4: ‘Who the Hades can have sent this up? It must have been that condemned little Freddy’ .
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 17 Jan. 13/1: Next morning the Celtic boss politely requested to be informed ‘what the sanguinary Hades this kind o’ thing might mean?’.
1890		Kipling ‘The Story of the Gadbsys’ in Soldiers Three (1907) 168: This is Hades! Can I wipe my face now?
1890		Sporting Times 8 Mar. 6/1: Monte Carlo regained its usual tranquil appearance, and was last reported to be as still as hades broke loose.
1899		A. Binstead Gal’s Gossip 25: Seniores priores, as the ploughed young ’un from Oxford said, when his irate parent told him to go to Hades.
1904		Sun. Times (Perth) 10 Jan. 1/1: The lady gets lushed-up and flogs Hades out of the flunkey.
1907		C.E. Mulford Bar-20 xv: ‘Oh, it’s my friend Slim going to hades,’ he remarked.
1910		Wodehouse Gentleman of Leisure Ch. xxvii: Here have I been all these years letting you give me Hades in every shape and form, when all the while —.
1910		Sun. Times (Perth) 19 June 2nd sect. 9/1: They Say [...] That there is Hades to pay over a recent skating carnival at the Port. That a prize supposed to be worth £50 turns out to be next to valueless.
1915		‘Ian Hay’ First Hundred Thousand (1918) 235: ‘Had any more trouble from Minnie?’ ‘We had Hades from her yesterday,’ explains Blaikie.
1923		Wodehouse Inimitable Jeeves 92: Now we’re going to have a Hades of a time.
1927		H.C. Witwer Classics in Sl. 62: Some little stiff has copied off the addresses of all the Smiths’ or the like from the city directory and blowed without sayin’ as much as go to Hades to my charming clerkess.
1934		J. Franklyn This Gutter Life 18: Here, who the cohabiting Hades is that sanguinary man or monkey, or whatever he isn’t?
1937		A.E. Duckett ‘Truckin ’round Brooklyn’ in N.Y. Age 13 Mar. 7/1: We resent [...] The bloke who won’t say ‘hell’ but ‘Hades’.
1944		C.S. Montanye ‘Shoulder Straps’ in Thrilling Detective Feb. 🌐 He [...] was whaling Hades out of him.
1972		(con. 1916) G. Swarthout Tin Lizzie Troop (1978) 47: The place was hot as Hades.

In phrases